best friend cut off in an ambushment?"

"We have served the Sarpent as good a turn as he served us. Those
rascals are troubled, Pathfinder, and are falling back into their
covers, since they find we can reach them across the river."

"The shot is no great matter, Jasper, no great matter. Ask any of the
60th, and they can tell you what Killdeer can do, and has done, and
that, too, when the bullets were flying about our heads like hailstones.
No, no! this is no great matter, and the unthoughtful vagabond drew it
down on himself."

"Is that a dog, or a deer, swimming towards this shore?" Pathfinder
started, for sure enough an object was crossing the stream, above the
rift, towards which, however, it was gradually setting by the force of
the current. A second look satisfied both the observers that it was
a man, and an Indian, though so concealed as at first to render it
doubtful. Some stratagem was apprehended, and the closest attention was
given to the movements of the stranger.

"He is pushing something before him as he swims, and his head resembles
a drifting bush," said Jasper.

"'Tis Indian devilry, boy; but Christian honesty shall circumvent their
arts."

As the man slowly approached, the observers began to doubt the accuracy
of their first impressions, and it was only when two-thirds of the
stream were passed that the truth was really known.

"The Big Sarpent, as I live!" exclaimed Pathfinder, looking at his
companion, and laughing until the tears came into his eyes with pure
delight at the success of the artifice. "He has tied bushes to his head,
so as to hide it, put the horn on top, lashed the rifle to that bit of
log he is pushing before him, and has come over to join his friends.
Ah's me! The times and times that he and I have cut such pranks, right
in the teeth of Mingos raging for our blood, in the great thoroughfare
round and about Ty!"

"It may not be the Serpent after all, Pathfinder; I can see no feature
that I remember."

"Feature! Who looks for features in an Indian? No, no, boy; 'tis the
paint that speaks, and none but a Delaware would wear that paint:
them are his colors, Jasper, just as your craft on the lake wears St.
George's Cross, and the Frenchers set their tablecloths to fluttering
in the wind, with all the stains of fish-bones and venison steaks upon
them. Now, you see the eye, lad, and it is the eye of a chief. But,
Eau-douce, fierce as it is in battle, and glassy as it looks from