horrible fashion, Teganisoris now proposed to
play. He offered to the clamoring medicine man and his ferocious
disciples one of these captives, whose death should appease not only the
offended Great Spirit, but also the unsated vengeance of the tribe. He
offered, at the same time, the spectacle of a play in which a human life
should be the stake. He used as practical executioner the woman who was
possessed by one of them, and who, in the crude notions of the savages,
was no doubt coveted by both. It must be the hand of this woman that
should cast the dice, a white one and a red one for each man, and he
whose red die fell closer to the line was winner in the grim game of
life and death.

Jean Breboeuf and Pierre Noir stood apart, and tears poured from the
eyes of both. They were hardened men, well acquainted with Indian
warfare; they had seen the writhings of tortured victims, and more than
once had faced such possibilities themselves; yet never had they seen
sight like this.

Near the two men stood Mary Connynge, the bright blood burning in her
cheeks, her eyes dry and wide open, looking from one to the other. God,
who gives to this earth the few Mary Connynges, alone knows the nature
of those elements which made her, and the character of the conflict
which now went on within her soul. Tell such a woman as Mary Connynge
that she has a rival, and she will either love the more madly the man
whom she demands as her own, or with equal madness and with greater
intensity will hate her lover with a hatred untying and unappeasable.

Mary Connynge stood, her eyes glancing from one to the other of the men
before her. She had seen them both proved brave men, strong of arm,
undaunted of heart, both gallant gentlemen. God, who makes the Mary
Connynges of this earth, only can tell whether or not there arose in the
heart of this savage woman, this woman at bay, scorned, rebuked,
mastered, this one question: Which? If Mary Connynge hated John Law, or
if she loved him--ah! how must have pulsed her heart in agony, or in
bitterness, as she took into her hand those lots which were the arbiters
of life and death!

Teganisoris looked about him and spoke a few rapid words. He caught Mary
Connynge roughly by the shoulder and pulled her forward. The two men
stood with faces set and gray in the pitiless light of morn. Their arms
were fast bound behind their backs. Eagerly the crowding savages
pressed up to them, gesticulating wildly, and pee