oor, constructed of the trunks of saplings, bound together
with withes, crashed inwards, coming to the floor with a tremendous
noise, and a dozen savages precipitated themselves into the cabin.
Landless fired, bringing one to his knee; then clubbed his musket and
swung it over his shoulder. Between him and the Susquehannock, standing
beside him with bent body and knife drawn back against his breast, and
the invaders, was a space some few feet in width, and in this space
something dreadful now happened.

On one side lay the body of the man with the woman crouched above it, on
the other a pile of skins upon which lay the little child. It had
sobbed itself into exhaustion and quiet, but terrified afresh by the
savage forms pouring through the doorway, the increased and awful
clamor, the flames which had now seized upon the walls, and the choking
smoke which filled the hut, it now scrambled from the pallet, and with a
weak cry started across the space towards its mother. It crossed the
path of the Ricahecrian chief--he glanced downwards, saw the tiny
tottering figure with its outstretched arms, caught it up, and holding
it by its feet, dashed its head against the ground. The cry which the
child uttered as he raised it reached the until then deaf ears of the
mother. She started up with a shriek that rang high above the yelling of
the savages, and darted forward, only to receive at her very feet the
mangled form of the baby she had sung to sleep but a few hours before.
She caught it to her breast and with another dreadful cry rushed upon
the savage. He met her, seized her free arm, raised it, and plunged his
knife into her bosom. Still clasping the child to her bosom, she fell
without a groan, while the Indian bounded on towards the three who yet
remained alive.

The Susquehannock met him. "A chief for a chief," he said with a cold
smile, and the two locked together in a deadly embrace. When the
Ricahecrian was dead, the Susquehannock turned to find Landless--one
Indian dead before him, another writhing away like a wounded
snake--confronting across the body at his feet the graceful figure and
the amber-hued, evil, smiling face of Luiz Sebastian. So strong were the
flames by now, and so dense and stifling the smoke, that of the score or
more who had broken into the cabin but few remained within its walls,
which were fast becoming those of a furnace, the majority retreating to
the fresh air outside, whence they whooped on to t