enonga, dripping with blood to the
hilt, divided the rope at a single blow, and then Roland's fingers were
crushed in the grasp of his preserver, as the latter exclaimed, with a
strange, half-frantic chuckle of triumph and delight,--

"Thee sees, friend! Thee thought I had deserted thee? Truly, truly, thee
was mistaken!"

"Hurrah for old Tiger Nathan! I'll never say Q to a quaker agin as long
as I live!" exclaimed another voice, broken, feeble, and vainly aiming to
raise a huzza; and the speaker, seizing Nathan with one hand, while the
other grasped tremulously at Captain Forrester's, displayed to the
latter's eyes the visage of Tom Bruce the younger, pale, sickly,
emaciated, his once gigantic proportions wasted away, and his whole
appearance indicating anything but fitness for a field of battle.

"Strannger!" cried the youth, pressing the soldier's hand with what
strength he could, and laughing faintly, "we've done the handsome thing
by you, me and dad, thar's no denying! But we went your security agin all
sorts of danngers in our beat; and thar's just the occasion. But h'yar's
dad to speak for himself: as for me, I rather think breath's too short
for wasting."

"Hurrah for Kentucky!" roared Colonel Bruce, as he sprang from his horse,
and seized the hand of Roland, wringing and twisting it with a fury of
friendship and gratulation, which, at another moment, would have caused
the soldier to grin with pain. "H'yar we are, captain!" he cried: "picked
you out of the yambers!--Swore to follow you and young madam to the end
of creation,--beat up for recruits, sung out 'Blue Lick' to the people,
roused the General from the Falls,--whole army, a thousand men; double
quick step; found Tiger Nathan in the woods--whar's the creatur'? told of
your fixin'; beat to arms, flew ahead, licked the enemy,--and ha'n't
we extarminated 'em?"

With these hurried, half-incoherent expressions, the gallant Kentuckian
explained, or endeavoured to explain, the mystery of his timely and most
happy appearance; an explanation, however, of which the soldier,
bewildered by the whirl of events, the tumult of his own feelings, and
not less by the uproarious congratulations of his friends, of whom the
captain of horse-thieves, released from his post of danger, was not the
least noisy or affectionate, heard, or understood not a word. To these
causes of confusion were to be added the din and tumult of conflict, the
screams of the flying Indians, and t