fested. The dusky children of the forest attributed to the
mysterious sound a supernatural agency. They believed it was a voice
from the perennial hunting grounds. Humbly they bowed their heads, and
whispered devotions to the Great Spirit. The young chief alone stood
erect. He gazed at the round moon above him, and sighs burst from his
breast, and burning tears ran down his stained cheek. Impatiently, by a
motion of the hand, he directed the savages to leave him, and when they
withdrew he resumed his seat on the fallen trunk, and reclined his brow
upon his hand. One of the long feathers that decked his head waved
forward, after he had been seated thus a few minutes, and when his eye
rested upon it he started up wildly, and tearing it away, trampled it
under his feet. At that instant the same "FATHER!" was again heard. The
young chief fell upon his knees, and, while he panted convulsively,
said, in English, "Father! Mother! I'm your poor William--you loved me
much--where are you? Oh tell me--I will come to you--I want to see you!"
He then fell prostrate and groaned piteously. "Father! Oh! where
are you?"

"Whose voice was that?" said Mary, breaking through the slight
incrustation that obscured her, and leaping from her covert.

The young chief sprang from the earth--gazed a moment at the maid--spoke
rapidly and loudly in the language of his tribe to his party, who were
now at the place of encampment, seated by the fire they had kindled--and
then, seizing his tomahawk, was in the act of hurling it at Mary, when
the yells of the war-party and the ringing discharges of fire-arms
arrested his steel when brandished in the air. The white men had
arrived! The young chief seized Mary by her long, flowing hair--again
prepared to strike the fatal blow--when she turned her face upward, and
he again hesitated. Discharges in quick succession, and nearer than
before, still rang in his ears. Mary strove not to escape. Nor did the
Indian strike. The whites were heard rushing through the bushes--the
chief seized the trembling girl in his arms--a bullet whizzed by his
head---but, unmindful of danger, he vanished among the dark bushes with
his burden.

"She's gone! she's gone!" exclaimed Roughgrove, looking aghast at the
vacated pit under the fallen trunk.

"But we will have her yet," said Boone, as he heard Glenn discharge a
pistol a few paces apart in the bushes. The report was followed by a
yell, not from the chief, but Sneak, and t