third time at the meadow, and a heavy
murmur of anticipation and excitement came to his ears.

Henry felt that everybody in the Wyandot village was looking at him. It
gave him a singular feeling to be thus the center of a thousand eyes,
and the little mental shiver came again, because the eyes were now
wholly those of savages. He felt a cool breath on his face. The wind was
blowing, and from the forest came the faint rustle of the leaves. He
listened a moment that he might hear that hopeful note, the almost human
voice that had spoken to him, but it was not there. It was just an
ordinary wind blowing in the wilderness, and he ceased to listen because
now his crisis was at hand.

Timmendiquas led toward the meadow, and Heno and Hainteroh came close
behind. Now Henry saw what they had prepared for him as the first stage
of his ordeal. He was to run the gantlet.

Two parallel lines had already been formed, running the longest way of
the meadow and far down into an opening of the forest, and all were
armed with switches or sticks, some of the latter so heavy, that,
wielded by a strong hand, they would knock a man senseless. No sympathy,
no kindliness showed in the faces of any of these people. The spirit of
the ball and the dance was gone. The white youth was their enemy, he had
chosen to remain so, and they knew no law but an eye for an eye and a
tooth for a tooth. Children and women were as eager as men for the
sport. It was a part of their teaching and belief.

Henry looked again down the line, and there he saw the renegades, three
on one side and three on the other. It seemed to him that theirs were
the most cruel faces of all. He saw Braxton Wyatt swinging a heavy
stick, and he resolved that it should never touch him. He could bear a
blow from an Indian, but not from Braxton Wyatt.

Then he looked from the cruel face of the renegade to the forest, so
green, so fresh, and so beautiful. What a glorious place it was and how
he longed to be there. The deep masses of green leaves, solid in the
distance, waved gently in the wind. Over this great green wilderness
bent the brilliant blue sky, golden at the dome from the high sun. It
was but a fleeting glance, and his eyes came back to earth, to the
Wyandots, and to his fate.

"I was able to make it the gantlet first," Timmendiquas was saying in
his ear. "Others wished to begin at once with the fire."

"Thank you, White Lightning," said Henry.

He looked for the third