ensued among the chiefs, in which,
as before, Wacousta bore a principal part. When this was terminated,
several Indians approached the unhappy officer, and unfastening the
thong with which his hands were firmly and even painfully girt,
deprived him both of coat, waistcoat, and shirt. He was then bound a
second time in the same manner, his body besmeared with paint, and his
head so disguised as to give him the caricature semblance of an Indian
warrior. When these preparations were completed, he was led to the tree
in which he had been previously concealed, and there firmly secured.
Meanwhile Wacousta, at the head of a numerous band of warriors, had
departed once more in the direction of the fort.

With the rising of the sun now vanished all traces of the mist that had
fallen since the early hours of morning, leaving the unfortunate
officer ample leisure to survey the difficulties of his position. He
had fancied, from the course taken by his guide the previous night,
that the plain or oasis, as we have elsewhere termed it, lay in the
very heart of the forest; but that route now proved to have been
circuitous. The tree to which he was bound was one of a slight belt,
separating the encampment from the open grounds which extended towards
the river, and which was so thin and scattered on that side as to leave
the clear silver waters of the Detroit visible at intervals. Oh, what
would he not have given, at that cheering sight, to have had his limbs
free, and his chance of life staked on the swiftness of his flight!
While he had imagined himself begirt by interminable forest, he felt as
one whose very thought to elude those who were, in some degree, the
deities of that wild scene, must be paralysed in its first conception.
But here was the vivifying, picture of civilised nature. Corn fields,
although trodden down and destroyed--dwelling houses, although burnt or
dilapidated--told of the existence of those who were of the same race
with himself; and notwithstanding these had perished even as he must
perish, still there was something in the aspect of the very ruins of
their habitations which, contrasted with the solemn gloom of the
forest, carried a momentary and indefinable consolation to his spirit.
Then there was the ripe and teeming orchard, and the low whitewashed
cabin of the Canadian peasant, to whom the offices of charity, and the
duties of humanity, were no strangers; and who, although the secret
enemies of his country,