can he help, since Nature points the way,
Following, if so he does, their noble school?
Or you, by birth and habit, knave and fool,
How can you help the trash you write--for pay?

THE "RED FEATHER."

AN INDIAN STORY.

WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

BY ISAAC M'LELLAN.

A century ago, the deep shadows of the untrimmed wilderness overspread
the broad valleys and wild hills of western New-York. The sound of the
squatter's axe had not then aroused the echoes of those remote
solitudes; nor the smoke of the frontiersman's cabin curled above the
tall branching oaks and the solemn hemlocks of the primeval forest. The
ploughshare had not then turned the fertile glebe, nor the cattle
browsed upon the tender herbage of that region, now so populous and
cultivated. The red stag there shook his branching antlers, and bounded
fearlessly through the open glades of the wood, or led the dappled doe
or fawn, at rosy dawn, or mellow eventide, to drink at the ice-cold
water-course, or the pellucid surface of the lake. The shaggy bear
prowled in the briery thicket, or fed on the acorns that autumn shook
down from the oak; and the tawny panther ranged unmolested in the rocky
fastnesses of the hills, or lay in the leafy covert for its prey. The
Indian hunter was then lord of the land. The Mohawk and the Oneida held
the region from the waters of the Hudson to the shores where Erie and
Ontario rolled upon the beach; and the smoke of the wigwam ascended by
many a quiet stream and wood. The hunter's rifle echoed among the hills,
and his arrow whistled in the glade--the war-dance and battle-song
resounded in every valley; and the sharp canoe, urged by the flashing
paddle, skimmed every stream and lake.

Many years since, a small band of marksmen of the Mohawk tribe, having
wandered far from their hunting-ground, were ambushed by a war-party of
the Oneidas, and their chief, Owaka, was slain in the contest. Wauchee,
or the Red-Feather, the only son of the old chief, and now the head of
the nation of the Mohawks, had been deeply distressed at his father's
loss, and had sworn that he would take the scalp of an Oneida, before
the flowers of another spring should bloom over his father's grave.

In the leafy month of June, the young chief wandered afar from the
lovely valley of his native river in pursuit of a small hunting-party of
the Oneidas who were said to be prowling in the neighborhood. He had
foll