laughingly telling each other of the method E-chee had taken
to rejoin his own people, his heart sank within him, and he felt that
he no longer had aught to hope for, now that his only friend amid all
these enemies was dead.

On the following day preparations for the great feast of rejoicing were
actively begun. In the middle of a small mound just outside the
village a stout post of green wood was set deep into the ground, and
near it was gathered a great pile of dry wood and fat pine splinters.
This was the stake at which the prisoners were to suffer torture, and
around which the chief interest of the festivities was to centre. The
feast was to continue for three days, according to the number of
prisoners on hand. One of them was, by his behavior under the
ingenious tortures devised especially for the occasion, to furnish the
principal amusement for each day. At its close, if he were not already
dead, he was to be sacrificed.

It was generally understood that the most important of the prisoners,
the young white chief, was to be reserved for the last and crowning day
of the feast, and for him an especial committee were inventing a series
of new and peculiarly painful tortures.

At all hours of the day crowds of women and children gathered about the
hut in which Rene was confined, in the hope of catching a glimpse of
him. Their delight knew no bounds when, occasionally, one of the more
good-natured of his guards would lift the mat of braided palmetto fibre
that hung before the entrance, and allow them to peep in at him, and
taunt him with hints of what he was to undergo.

Wearily did the long hours pass with the unhappy boy as he lay thus
friendless among cruel enemies, helplessly awaiting the fate from which
he shrank so fearfully, and yet from which he could conceive no manner
of escape.

CHAPTER XVI

HAS-SE RECEIVES THE TOKEN

Far away from the scenes of sorrow, suffering, savage cruelty, and
savage rejoicing of which the shadowy depths of the great swamp were
witness, in the pleasant land of the Alachuas, the close of the second
day after the one on which Rene de Veaux had been held a prisoner into
the Seminole village presented a picture of peace and happy
contentment. A light breeze sweeping across the broad savannas brought
with it the odors of countless flowers; from the moss-hung trees many
birds poured forth their evening songs in floods of melody, and all
nature was full of beauty and rejo