nswer that rose to her lips:

"If it be so," she faltered out, "this village, then, I must never leave;
for here I will die, die even by the hands of barbarians, and die a
thousand times, ere I look upon you, base and cruel man, with any but the
eyes of detestation. I hated you ever,--I hate you yet."

"My fair mistress," said Braxley, with a sneer that might have well
become the lip of the devil he had pronounced the then ruler of his
breast, "knows not all the alternative. Death is a boon the savages may
bestow, when the whim takes them. But before that, they must show their
affection for their prisoner. There are many that can admire the bright
eyes and ruddy cheeks of the white maiden; and some one, doubtless, will
admit the stranger to a corner of his wigwam and his bosom! Ay, madam, I
will speak plainly,--it is as the wife of Richard Braxley or of a pagan
savage you go out of the tent of Wenonga. Or why go out of the tent of
Wenonga at all? Is Wenonga insensible to the beauty of his guest? The hag
that I drove from the fire, seemed already to see in her prisoner the
maid that was to rob her of her husband."

"Heaven help me!" exclaimed Edith, sinking again to her seat, wholly
overcome by the horrors it was the object of the wooer to accumulate on
her mind. He noted the effect of his threat, and stealing up, he took her
trembling, almost lifeless hand, adding, but in a softer voice,--

"Why will Edith drive one who adores her to these extremities? Let her
smile but as she smiled of yore, and all will yet be well. One smile
secures her deliverance from all that she dreads, her restoration to her
home and to happiness. With that smile, the angel again awakes in my
bosom, and all is love and tenderness."

"Heaven help me!" iterated the trembling girl, struggling to shake off
Braxley's hand. But she struggled feebly and in vain; and Braxley, in the
audacity of his belief that he had frightened her into a more reasonable
mood, proceeded the length of throwing an arm around his almost
insensible victim.

But heaven was not unmindful of the prayer of the desolate and helpless
maid. Scarce had his arm encircled the waist of the captive, when a pair
of arms, long and brawny, infolded his body as in the hug of an angry
bear, and in an instant he lay upon his back on the floor, a knee upon
his breast, a hand at his throat, and a knife, glittering blood-red in
the light of the fire, flourished within an inch of his eyes: