was dragged from among the horses to the fire, where he was almost
immediately recognised by half a dozen different warriors, as the
redoubted and incorrigible horse-thief, Captain Stackpole. The wonderful
conjuror, and the wonderful young Long-knife, who was one moment a
captive in the hands of Piankeshaws on the banks of the Wabash, and, the
next, an invader of a Shawnee village in the valley of the Miami, were
both forgotten: the captain of horse-thieves was a much more wonderful
person,--or, at least, a much more important prize. His name was howled
aloud and in a moment became the theme of every tongue; and he was
instantly surrounded by every man in the village,--we may say, every
woman and child, too, for the alarm had brought the whole village into
the square; and the shrieks of triumph, the yells of unfeigned delight
with which all welcomed a prisoner so renowned and so detested, produced
an uproar ten times greater than that which gave the alarm.

It was indeed Stackpole, the zealous and unlucky slave of a mistress whom
it was his fate to injure and wrong in every attempt he made to serve
her; and who had brought himself and his associates to their present
bonds by merely toiling on the present occasion too hard in her service.
It seems,--for so he was used himself to tell the tale,--that he entered
the Indian pound with the resolution to fulfil Nathan's instructions to
the letter; and he accordingly selected four of the best animals of the
herd, which he succeeded in haltering without difficulty or noise. Had he
paused here, he might have retreated with his prizes without fear of
discovery. But the excellence of the opportunity,--the best he had ever
had in his life,--the excellence, too, of the horses, thirty or forty in
number, "the primest and beautifullest critturs," he averred, "what war
ever seed in a hoss-pound," with a notion which now suddenly beset his
grateful brain, namely, that by carrying off the whole herd he could
"make anngelliferous madam rich in the item of hoss-flesh," proved too
much for his philosophy and his judgment; and after holding a council of
war in his own mind, he came to a resolution "to steal the lot."

This being determined upon, he imitated the example of magnanimity lately
set him by Nathan, stripped off and converted his venerable wrap-rascal
into extemporary halters, and so made sure of half a dozen more of the
best horses; with which, and the four first selected, not doub