justly said, offered the only prospect of cutting off
the retreat of those who might survive the fire. But Nathan had already
schemed the matter otherwise: he had remarked the impossibility of
approaching the enemy from below, the valley offering no concealment
which would make an advance in that quarter practicable; whereas the
bushes on the slope, where the two walls of the glen united, afforded the
most inviting opportunity to creep on the foe without fear of detection.
"Truly," said he, "we will get us as nigh the assassin thieves as we can;
and, truly, it may be our luck, each of us, to get a brace of them in
range together, and so bang them beautiful!"--an idea that was manifestly
highly agreeable to his imagination, from which he seemed to have utterly
banished all those disgusts and gaingivings on the subject of fighting,
which had formerly afflicted it; "or perhaps, if we can do nothing
better," he continued, "we may catch the vagabonds wandering from their
guns, to pick up sticks for their fire; in which case, friend, truly, it
may be our luck to help them to a second volley out of their own pieces:
or, if the worst must come, truly, then, I do know of a device that may
help the villains into our hands, even to their own undoing!"

With these words, having first examined his own and Roland's arms, to see
that all were in proper battle condition, and then directed little Peter
to ensconce in a bush, wherein little Peter straightway bestowed himself,
Tiger Nathan, with an alacrity of motion and ardour of look that
indicated anything rather than distaste to the murderous work in hand,
led the way along the ridge, until he had reached the place where it
dipped down to the valley, covered with the bushes through which he
expected to advance to a desirable position undiscovered.

But a better auxiliary even than the bushes was soon discovered by the
two friends. A deep gully, washed in the side of the hill by the rains,
was here found running obliquely from its top to the bottom, affording a
covered way, by which, as they saw at a glance, they could approach
within twenty or thirty yards of the foe entirely unseen; and, to add to
its advantages, it was the bed of a little water-course, whose murmurs,
as it leaped from rock to rock, assured them they could as certainly
approach unheard.

"Truly," muttered Nathan, with a grim chuckle, as he looked, first, at
the friendly ravine, and then at the savages below, "the P