, nearly gasping for breath.

"No relation, tell you," said Nick, a little angrily. "Why make
relation, when no relation at all. Meredit'; no Willoughby. Ask moder;
ask major; ask chaplain--all tell trut'! No need to be so feelin'; no
you fader, at all."

"What _can_ you--what _do_ you mean, Nick? Why do you look so
wild--so fierce--so kind--so sorrowful--so angry? You must have bad
news to tell me."

"Why bad to _you_--he no fader--only fader friend. You can't help
it--fader die when you pappoose--why you care, now, for dis?"

Maud now actually gasped for breath. A frightful glimpse of the truth
gleamed before her imagination, though it was necessarily veiled in the
mist of uncertainty. She became pale as death, and pressed her hand
upon her heart, as if to still its beating. Then, by a desperate
effort, she became more calm, and obtained the power to speak.

"Oh! is it so, Nick!--_can_ it be so!" she said; "my father has
fallen in this dreadful business?"

"Fader kill twenty year ago; tell you _dat_, how often?" answered
the Tuscarora, angrily; for, in his anxiety to lessen the shock to
Maud, for whom this wayward savage had a strange sentiment of
affection, that had grown out of her gentle kindnesses to himself, on a
hundred occasions, he fancied if she knew that Captain Willoughby was
not actually her father, her grief at his loss would be less. "Why you
call _dis_ fader, when _dat_ fader. Nick know fader and
moder.--Major no broder."

Notwithstanding the sensations that nearly pressed her to the earth,
the tell-tale blood rushed to Maud's cheeks, again, at this allusion,
and she bowed her face to her knees. The action gave her time to rally
her faculties; and catching a glimpse of the vast importance to all for
her maintaining self-command, she was enabled to raise her face with
something like the fortitude the Indian hoped to see.

"Trifle with me no longer, Wyandotte, but let me know the worst at
once. Is my father dead?--By father, I mean captain Willoughby?"

"Mean wrong, den--no fader, tell you. Why young quaw so much like
Mohawk?"

"Man--is captain Willoughby killed?"

Nick gazed intently into Maud's face for half a minute, and then he
nodded an assent. Notwithstanding all her resolutions to be steady, our
heroine nearly sank under the blow. For ten minutes she spoke not, but
sat, her head bowed to her knees, in a confusion of thought that
threatened a temporary loss of reason. Happily, a flood