t must have been received
at some period anterior to the attack which had robbed the warrior of
life. The gashes across the ribs were the only other wounds on the body;
that on the head, made by a hatchet, was evidently the one that had
caused the warrior's death.

If this circumstance abated the wonder the soldier had at first felt on
the score of a man being killed at so short a distance from his own
party, without any one hearing the shot, he was still more at a loss to
know how one of the dead man's race, proverbial for wariness and
vigilance, should have been approached by any merely human enemy so nigh
as to render fire-arms unnecessary to his destruction. But that a human
enemy had effected the slaughter, inexplicable as it seemed, he had no
doubt; and he began straightway to search among the leaves strewn over
the ground, for the marks of his foot-steps; not questioning that, if he
could find and follow them for a little distance, he should discover the
author of the deed, and, which was of more moment to himself, a friend
and guide to conduct his party from the forest.

His search was, however, fruitless; for, whether it was that the shadows
of the evening lay too dark on the ground, or that eyes more accustomed
than his own to such duties were required to detect a trail among dried
forest leaves, it was certain that he failed to discover a single
foot-step, or other vestige of the slayer. Nor were Pardon Dodge and
Emperor, whom he summoned to his assistance, a whit more successful; a
circumstance, however, that rather proved their inexperience than the
supernatural character of the Jibbenainosay, whose foot-prints, as it
appeared, were not more difficult to find than those of the dead Indian,
for which they sought equally in vain.

While they were thus fruitlessly engaged, an exclamation from Telie Doe
drew their attention to a spectacle, suddenly observed, which, to her
awe-struck eyes, presented the appearance of the very being, so truculent
yet supernatural, whose traces, it seemed, were to be discovered only on
the breasts of his lifeless victims; and Roland, looking up, beheld with
surprise, perhaps even for a moment with the stronger feeling of awe, a
figure stalking through the woods at a distance, looking as tall and
gigantic in the growing twilight, as the airy demon of the Brocken, or
the equally colossal spectres seen on the wild summits of the Peruvian
Andes. Distance and the darkness together re