y
of despair, sought to awaken his eupidity and compassion. The door-mats
had scarce closed upon his retreating figure before they were parted to
give entrance to the two old Indians, who immediately assumed their
positions at his side, preserving them with vigilant fidelity throughout
the remainder of the night.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

In the meantime, and at the very moment when the renegade was urging his
extraordinary proposals to the young Virginian, a scene was passing in
the hut of Wenonga, in which one of Roland's fellow-prisoners was
destined to play an important and remarkable part. There, in the very
tent in which he had struck so daring a blow for the rescue of Edith, but
in which Edith appeared no more, lay the luckless Nathan, a victim not so
much of his own rashness as of the excessive zeal, not to say folly, of
his coadjutors. And thither he had been conducted but a few hours before,
after having passed the previous night and day in a prison-house less
honoured, but fated, as it proved, to derive peculiar distinction from
the presence of such a guest.

His extraordinary appearance, partaking so much of that of an Indian
juggler arrayed in the panoply of legerdemain, had produced, as was
mentioned, a powerful effect on the minds of his captors, ever prone to
the grossest credulity and superstition; and this was prodigiously
increased by the sudden recurrence of his disease,--a dreadful
infliction, whose convulsions seem ever to have been proposed as the
favourite exemplars for the expression of prophetic fury and the
demoniacal orgasm, and were aped alike by the Pythian priestess on her
tripod and the ruder impostor of an Indian wigwam. The foaming lips and
convulsed limbs of the prisoner, if they did not "speak the god," to the
awe-struck barbarians, declared at least the presence of the mighty fiend
who possessed his body; and when the fit was over, though they took good
care to bind him with thongs of bison-hide, like his companions, and led
him away to a place of security, it was with a degree of gentleness and
respect that proved the strength of their belief in his supernatural
endowments. This belief was still further indicated, the next day, by
crowds of savages who flocked into the wigwam where he was confined, some
to stare at him, some to inquire the mysteries of their fate, and some,
as it seemed, with credulity less unconditional, to solve the enigma of
his appearance before yielding thei