cy Nick. Major Willoughby, I have a
secret to communicate--I beg pardon, Sir Robert--but you will excuse
old habits--if you will walk this way."

Willoughby was apart with the chaplain a full half-hour, during which
time Maud wept over the graves, the rest standing by in respectful
silence. As for Nick, a stone could scarcely have been more fixed than
his attitude. Nevertheless, his mien was rebuked, his eye downcast;
even his bosom was singularly convulsed. He knew that the chaplain was
communicating to Willoughby the manner in which he had slain his
father. At length, the gentlemen returned slowly towards the graves;
the general agitated, frowning, and flushed. As for Mr. Woods, he was
placid and full of hope. Willoughby had yielded to his expostulations
and arguments a forgiveness, which came reluctantly, and perhaps as
much for the want of a suitable object for retaliation, as from a sense
of Christian duty.

"Nicholas," said the chaplain, "I have told the general all."

"He know him!" cried the Indian, with startling energy.

"I do, Wyandotte; and sorry have I been to learn it. You have made my
heart bitter."

Nick was terribly agitated. His youthful and former opinions maintained
a fearful struggle with those which had come late in life; the result
being a wild admixture of his sense of Indian justice, and submission
to the tenets of his new, and imperfectly-comprehended faith. For a
moment, the first prevailed. Advancing, with a firm step, to the
general, he put his own bright and keen tomahawk into the other's
hands, folded his arms on his bosom, bowed his head a little, and said,
firmly--

"Strike--Nick kill cap'in--Major kill Nick."

"No, Tuscarora, no," answered Sir Robert Willoughby, his whole soul
yielding before this act of humble submission--"May God in heaven
forgive the deed, as I now forgive you."

There was a wild smile gleaming on the face of the Indian; he grasped
both hands of Willoughby in his own. He then muttered the words, "God
forgive," his eye rolled upward at the clouds, and he fell dead on the
grave of his victim. It was thought, afterwards, that agitation had
accelerated the crisis of an incurable affection of the heart.

A few minutes of confusion followed. Then Mike, bare-headed, his old
face flushed and angry, dragged from his pockets a string of strange-
looking, hideous objects, and laid them by the Indian's side. They were
human scalps, collected by himself, in the course