hrow herself between them and
their prey, and uttering the most heart-piercing shrieks.

"It is Telie Doe!" shouted Forrester, leaping from his kinswoman's side,
and rushing with the speed of light to her assistance.--He was followed,
at almost as fleet a step, by Colonel Bruce, who recognised the voice at
the same instant, and knew by the ferocious cries of the men,--"Kill the
cursed tory! kill the renegade villain!" that it was the girl's apostate
father, Abel Doe, who was dying under their vengeful weapons.

"Hold, friends, hold!" cried Roland, as he sprang amid the infuriated
Kentuckians. His interposition was for a moment successful: surprise
arrested the impending weapons; and Doe, taking advantage of the pause,
leaped to his feet, ran a few yards, and then fell again to the ground.

"No quarter for turn-coats and traitors! no mercy for white Injuns!"
cried the angry men, running again at their prey. But Roland was before
them; and as he bestrode the wounded man, the gigantic Bruce rushed up,
and, catching the frenzied daughter in his arms, exclaimed, with tones of
thunder, "Off, you perditioned brutes! would you kill the man before the
eyes of his own natteral-born daughter? Kill Injuns, you brutes,--thar's
the meat for you!"

"Hurrah for Cunnel Tom Bruce!" shouted the men in reply; and satisfying
their rage with direful execrations, invoked upon "all white Injuns and
Injun white men," they rushed away in pursuit of more legitimate objects
of hostility, if such were still to be found,--a thing not so certain,
for few Indian whoops were now mingled with the white man's cry of
victory.

In the meanwhile, Roland had endeavoured to raise the bleeding and
mangled renegade to his feet; but in vain, though assisted by the efforts
of the unhappy wretch himself; who, raising his hands, as if still to
avert the blows of an unrelenting enemy, ejaculated wildly,--"It a'n't
nothing,--its only for the gal. Don't murder a father before his own
child!"

"You are safe,--fear nothing," said Roland, and at the same moment, poor
Telie herself rushed into the dying man's arms, crying, with tones that
went to the Virginian's heart,--"They're gone, father, they're gone! Now
get up, father, and they won't hurt you no more; the good captain has
saved you, father; they won't hurt you, they won't hurt you no more!"

"Is it the Captain?" cried Doe, struggling again to rise, while Bruce
drew the girl gently from his arms. "Is it the c