delusion of mind: the spectacle was too palpable to be
doubted: it was Roland Forrester whom she saw, chained to the stake,
surrounded by yelling and pitiless barbarians, impatient for the
commencement of their infernal pastime, while the wife of the chief,
kneeling at the pile, was already endeavouring, with her brand, to kindle
it into flame.

The shriek of the wretched maiden, as she beheld the deplorable, the
maddening sight, might have melted hearts of stone, had there been even
such among the Indians. But Indians, engaged in the delights of torturing
a prisoner, are, as the dead chief had boasted himself, _without_ heart.
Pity, which the Indian can feel at another moment, as deeply, perhaps,
and benignly as a white man, seems then, and is, entirely unknown, as
much so, indeed, as if it had never entered into his nature. His mind is
then voluntarily given tip to the drunkenness of passion; and cruelty, in
its most atrocious and fiendish character, reigns predominant. The
familiar of a Spanish Inquisition has sometimes moistened the lips of a
heretic stretched upon the rack,--the Buccaneer of the tropics has
relented over the contumacious prisoner gasping to death under his lashes
and heated pincers; but we know of no instance where an Indian, torturing
a prisoner at the stake, the torture once begun, has ever been moved to
compassionate, to regard with any feelings but those of exultation and
joy, the agonies of the thrice-wretched victim.

The shriek of the maiden was unheard, or unregarded; and
Braxley,--himself so horrified by the spectacle that, while pausing
to give it a glance, he forgot the delay was also disclosing it to
Edith,--grasping her tighter in his arms, from which she had half leaped
in her frenzy, turned his horse's head to fly, without seeming to be
regarded or observed by the savages, which was perhaps in part owing to
his having resumed his Indian attire. But, as he turned, he could not
resist the impulse to snatch one more look at his doomed rival. A
universal yell of triumph sounded over the square; the flames were
already bursting from the pile, and the torture was begun.

The torture was begun,--but it was not destined long to endure. The
yell of triumph was yet resounding over the square, and awakening
responsive echoes among the surrounding hills, when the explosion of at
least fifty rifles, sharp, rattling, and deadly, like the war-note of the
rattle-snake, followed by a mighty hurrah