I am a warrior
with no heart. I killed them: their scalps are hanging to my fire-post!
I am not sorry; I am not afraid."

The eyes of the prisoner followed the Indian's hand, as he pointed, with
savage triumph, to the shrivelled scalps that had once crowned the heads
of childhood and innocence, and then sank to the floor, while his whole
frame shivered as with an ague-fit.

"My brother is a great medicine-man," iterated the chief: "he shall show
me the Jibbenainosay, or he shall die."

"The chief lies!" cried Nathan, with a sudden and taunting laugh: "he can
talk big things to a prisoner, but he fears the Jibbenainosay!"

"I am a chief and warrior. I will fight the white-man's devil!"

"The warrior shall see him then," said the captive, with extraordinary
fire. "Cut me loose from my bonds, and I will bring him before the
chief."

And as he spoke, he thrust out his legs, inviting the stroke of the axe
upon the thongs that bound his ankles.

But this was a favour, which, stupid or mad as he was, Wenonga hesitated
to grant.

"The chief," cried Nathan, with a laugh of scorn, "would stand face to
face with the Jibbenainosay, and yet fears to loose a naked prisoner!"

The taunt produced its effect. The axe fell upon tho thong, and Nathan
leaped to his feet. He extended his wrists. The Indian hesitated again.
"The chief shall see the Jibbenainosay!" cried Nathan; and the cord was
cut.

The prisoner turned quickly round; and while his eyes fastened with a
wild but joyous glare upon his jailer's, a laugh that would have become
the jaws of a hyena lighted up his visage, and sounded from his lips.
"Look!" he cried, "thee has thee wish! Thee sees the destroyer of thee
race,--ay, murdering villain, the destroyer of thee people, and
theeself!"

And with that, leaping upon the astounded chief with rather the rancorous
ferocity of a wolf than the enmity of a human being, and clutching him by
the throat with one hand, while with the other he tore the iron tomahawk
from his grasp, he bore him to the earth, clinging to him as he fell,
and using the wrested weapon with such furious haste and skill that,
before they had yet reached the ground, he had buried it in the Indian's
brain. Another stroke, and another, he gave with the same murderous
activity and force; and Wenonga trode the path to the spiritland, bearing
the same gory evidences of the unrelenting and successful vengeance of
the white-man that his children and grand-