he shouts of pursuing and opposing
white-men, rising from every point of the compass; for from every point
they seemed rushing in upon the foe, whom they appeared to have
completely environed. Was there no other cause for the distraction of
mind which left the young soldier, while thus beset by friendly hands and
voices, incapable of giving them his whole attention? His thoughts were
upon his kinswoman, of whose fate he was still in ignorance. But before
he could ask the question prompted by his anxieties, it was answered by a
cheery hurrah from Bruce's youngest son, Richard, who came galloping into
the square and up to the place of torture, whirling his cap into the air,
in a frenzy of boyish triumph and rapture. At his heels, and mounted
upon the steed so lately bestridden by Braxley, the very animal, which,
notwithstanding its uncommon swimming virtues, had left its master,
Pardon Dodge, at the bottom of Salt River, was--could Roland believe his
eyes?--the identical Pardon Dodge himself, looking a hero, he was so
begrimed with blood and gunpowder, and whooping and hurrahing, as he
came, with as much spirit as if he had been born on the border, and
accustomed all his life to fighting Indians. But Roland did not admire
long at the unlooked-for resurrection of his old ally of the ruin. In his
arms, sustained with an air of infinite pride and exultation, was an
apparition that blinded the Virginian's eyes to every other object;--it
was Edith Forrester; who, extending her own arms, as the soldier sprang
to meet her, leaped to his embrace with such wild cries of delight, such
abandonment of spirit to love and happiness, as stirred up many a
womanish emotion in the breast of the surrounding Kentuckians.

"There!" cried Dodge, "there, capting! Seed the everlasting Injun feller
carrying her off on the hoss; knowed the crittur at first sight; took
atter, and brought the feller to: seed it was the young lady, and was
jist as glad to find her as to find my hoss,--if I wa'n't, it a'n't no
matter."

"Thar, dad!" cried Tom Bruce, grasping his father's arm, and pointing,
but with unsteady finger and glistening eye, at the two cousins,--"that,
that's a sight worth dying for!" with which words he fell suddenly to the
earth.

"Dying, you brute!" cried the father in surprise and concern: "you ar'n't
had a hit, Tom?"

"Not an iota," replied the youth, faintly, "except them etarnal slugs I
fetched from old Salt; but, I reckon, they've