bject, not larger, I have said, than
an orange. Oh, God! will the shot never come?

It came. The flash, the crack, the stream of fire, the wild hurrah, the
forward rush, were all simultaneous things. We saw the shivered globe
fly off. The girl was still upon her feet; she was safe!

I ran with the rest. The smoke for a moment blinded me. I heard the
shrill notes of the Indian whistle. I looked before me. The girl had
disappeared.

We ran to the spot where she had stood. We heard a rustling in the
underwood, a departing footstep. We knew it was she; but guided by an
instinct of delicacy, and a knowledge that it would be contrary to the
wish of her brother, no one followed her.

We found the fragments of the calabash strewed over the ground. We
found the leaden mark upon them. The bullet itself was buried in the
bark of the tree, and one of the hunters commenced digging it out with
the point of his bowie.

When we turned to go back we saw that the Indian had walked away, and
now stood chatting easily and familiarly with Seguin.

As we re-entered the camp-ground I observed Garey stoop and pick up a
shining object. It was the _gage d'amour_, which he carefully
readjusted around his neck in its wonted position.

From his look and the manner in which he handled it, it was plain that
he now regarded that souvenir with more reverence than ever.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.

A FEAT A LA TAIL.

I had fallen into a sort of reverie. My mind was occupied with the
incidents I had just witnessed, when a voice, which I recognised as that
of old Rube, roused me from my abstraction.

"Look'ee hyur, boyees! Tain't of'n as ole Rube wastes lead, but I'll
beat that Injun's shot, or 'ee may cut my ears off."

A loud laugh hailed this allusion of the trapper to his ears, which, as
we have observed, were already gone; and so closely had they been
trimmed that nothing remained for either knife or shears to accomplish.

"How will you do it, Rube?" cried one of the hunters; "shoot the mark
off a yer own head?"

"I'll let 'ee see if 'ee wait," replied Rube, stalking up to a tree, and
taking from its rest a long, heavy rifle, which he proceeded to wipe out
with care.

The attention of all was now turned to the manoeuvres of the old
trapper. Conjecture was busy as to his designs. What feat could he
perform that would eclipse the one just witnessed? No one could guess.

"I'll beat it," continued he, muttering, as he l