wn upon the ground, without any attempt to follow his
master, Nathan departed, with Roaring Ralph at his side, leaving Roland
to mutter his anxieties and fears, his doubts and impatience, into the
ears of the least presuming of counsellors.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

The night was brilliantly clear, the stars shining with an excess of
lustre, with which Nathan would perhaps, at that moment, have gladly
dispensed, since it was by no means favourable to the achievement he was
now so daringly attempting. Fortunately, however, the Indian village lay,
for the most part, in the shadow of the hill, itself covered with
majestic maples and tulip-trees, that rose in dark and solemn masses
above it, and thus offered the concealment denied in the more open parts
of the valley. With Ralph still at his side, he crept round the
projecting corner of the hill, and, shrouded in its gloom, drew nigh the
village, wherein might be still occasionally heard the halloo of a
drunken savage, followed by an uproarious chorus of barking and howling
curs.

Whether it was that these sounds, or some gloomy forebodings of his own,
awoke the anxieties of Nathan, he did not deign to reveal; but, by and
by, having arrived within but a few paces of a wretched pile of skins and
boughs, the dwelling of some equally wretched and improvident barbarian,
he came to a sudden halt, and withdrawing the captain of horse-thieves
aside from the path, addressed him in the following terms:--

"Thee says, friend, thee has taken horses from this very Village, and
that thee knows it well?"

"As well," replied Ralph, "as I know the step-mothers on my own thumbs
and fingers,--I do, 'tarnal death to me,--that is to say, all the parts,
injacent and outjacent, circum-surrounding the boss-stamp; for thar's the
place of my visiting. The way to fetch it, old boy, is jist to fetch
round this h'yar old skin-pot, whar thar's a whole bee's-nest of young
papooses, the size of bull-toads,--from that, up--(I know it, 'cause how,
I heerd 'em squallin'; and thar war some one a lickin' 'em); or, if you
don't favour taking it so close to the skirmudgeons, then you must claw
up the knob h'yar, and then take and take the shoot, till you fetch right
among the hosses, whar you h'ar them whinnying down the holler; and
thar--"

"Friend," said Nathan, cutting him short, "it is on _thee_ doings, more
than on them of any others, that the hopes of the maid Edith--"

"Call her anngelliferous ma