t seemed impossible the older braves could protect
him much longer. But others ran to their assistance; and forming a circle
around him, so as to exclude the mob, he was borne onwards, in temporary
security, but destined to a fate to which murder on the spot would have
been gentleness and mercy.

The tumult had roused Edith also from her painful slumbers; and the more
necessarily, since, although removed from the tent in which she was first
imprisoned, she was still confined in Wenonga's wigwam. It was the scream
of the hag, the chieftain's wife, who had discovered his body, that first
gave the alarm; and the villagers all rushing to the cabin, and yelling
their astonishment and terror, there arose an uproar, almost in her ears,
that was better fitted to fright her to death than to lull her again to
repose. She started from her couch of furs, and with a woman's weakness,
cowered away in the furthest corner of the lodge, to escape the pitiless
fees, whom her fears represented as already seeking her life. Nor was
this chimera banished from her mind when a man, rushing in, snatched her
from her ineffectual concealment and hurried her towards the door. But
her terrors ran in another channel, when the ravisher, conquering the
feeble resistance she attempted, replied to her wild entreaties "not to
kill her," in the well-remembered voice of Braxley:

"Kill you, indeed!" he muttered, but with agitated tones; "I come to save
you; even _you_ are in danger from the maddened villains: they are
murdering all! We must fly,--ay, and fast. My horse is saddled,--the
woods are open--I will yet save you."

"Spare me!--for my uncle's sake, who was your benefactor, spare me!"
cried Edith, struggling to free herself from his grasp. But she struggled
in vain. "I aim to save you," cried Braxley; and without uttering another
word, bore her from the hut; and, still grasping her with an arm of iron,
sprang upon a saddled horse,--the identical animal that had once
sustained the weight of the unfortunate Pardon Dodge,--which stood under
the elm-tree, trembling with fright at the scene of horror then
represented on the square.

Upon this vacant space was now assembled the whole population of the
village, old and young, the strong and the feeble, all agitated alike by
those passions, which, when let loose in a mob, whether civilised or
savage, almost enforce the conviction that there is something essentially
demoniac in the human character and com