ld's
head, threw it into the face of the savage, and hurried to her bed.

"The devil's in the woman!" muttered her husband, apparently not a
little uneasy at her violence.

"The red warrior," said the Indian, with immovable calm, "will pay with
beaver skins for the milk that his little daughter drinks, but he will
keep what he has found, and the door must open when he comes for the
child."

"That's all very well," said the tavern-keeper, to whom it suddenly
appeared to occur that some farther explanation might not be altogether
superfluous; "and I'll keep the child willingly enough, though, thank
God, I've plenty of my own. But if the parents should come, or the white
father hear of the child, what then? The red chief knows that his hand
reaches far."

The Indian remained for a while silent, and then replied in a
significant tone--

"The child's mother will never come. The night is very dark, the storm
howls in the forest--to-morrow nothing will be seen of the red men's
footsteps. It is far to the wigwam of the white father. If he hears of
the child, my white brother will have told him. It he takes it, then
will the red chief take the scalps of his white brother's children."

"Then take your child back again," said the backwoodsman, in a decided
tone, "I'll have nought to do with it."

The Indian drew his knife, upon which fresh blood-stains were visible,
and cast an ominous glance towards the bed.

"We will take care of it; no one shall hear of it!" screamed the
horrorstruck woman. The Indian calmly replaced the knife in his girdle,
and again spoke.

"The throats of the red men are dry," said he.

A muttering was heard behind the curtains of the bed, sounding not
unlike the Christian wish, that every drop the bloodhounds swallowed
might prove poison to them; the host, however, whose humanity was less
vindictive than that of his wife, hastened to the bar to comply with his
guest's demand. The chief drank a half-gill of whisky at a draught, and
then passed the glass to his neighbour. When a sixth bottle had been
emptied, he suddenly rose, threw a Spanish gold piece upon the table,
opened the curtains of the bed, and hung a string of corals, which he
took from his wampum girdle, round the neck of the child.

"The red men will know the daughter of a warrior," said he, fixing his
eyes upon the infant, which now lay wrapped in flannel upon the bosom of
the hostess. He gave a second glance at woman and child, an