ed, surprising that Abel Doe should
possess another name; since it was a common practice among renegades
like himself, from some sentiment of shame or other obvious reasons, to
assume an _alias_ and _nom de guerre_, under which they acquired their
notoriety: the only wonder was, that he should prove to be that person
whose agency in the abduction of Edith would, of all other men in the
world, go furthest to sustain the belief of Braxley being the principal
contriver of the outrage.

Such thoughts as these may have wandered through Nathan's mind; but he
took little time to con them over. He had made a discovery at that moment
of more stirring importance and interest. Allowing that Edith Forrester
was the prisoner of whom the disguised stranger and his sordid
confederate spoke, and there was little reason to doubt it, he had
learned, out of their own mouths, the place of her concealment, to
discover which was the object of his daring visit to the village. Her
prison-house was the wigwam of Wenonga, the chief,--if chief he could
still be called, whom the displeasure of his tribe had robbed of almost
every vestige of authority; and thither Nathan, to whom the vile
bargaining of the white-men no longer offered interest, supposing he
could even have overheard it, instantly determined to make his way.

But how was Nathan to know the cabin of the chief from the dozen other
hovels that surrounded the Council-house. That was a question which,
perhaps Nathan did not ask himself: for creeping softly from Doe's hut,
and turning into the street (if such could be called the irregular
winding space that separated the two lines of cabins composing the
village), he stole forward, with nothing of the hesitation or doubt which
might have been expected from one unfamiliar with the village.

CHAPTER XXIX.

While Nathan lay watching at the renegade's hut, there came a change over
the aspect of the night, little less favourable to his plans and hopes
than even the discovery of Edith's place of concealment, which he had so
fortunately made. The sky became suddenly overcast with clouds, and deep
darkness invested the Indian village; while gusts of wind, sweeping with
a moaning sound over the adjacent hills, and waking the forests from
their repose, came rushing over the village, whirring and fluttering
aloft like flights of the boding night-raven, or the more powerful bird
of prey that had given its name to the chieftain of the tribe.