o!" said Magua, after satisfying himself of the safety of the captive;
"the sun must shine on his shame; the squaws must see his flesh tremble,
or our revenge will be like the play of boys. Go! take him where there
is silence; let us see if a Delaware can sleep at night, and in the
morning die."

The young men whose duty it was to guard the prisoner instantly passed
their ligaments of bark across his arms, and led him from the lodge,
amid a profound and ominous silence. It was only as the figure of Uncas
stood in the opening of the door that his firm step hesitated. There he
turned, and, in the sweeping and haughty glance that he threw around
the circle of his enemies, Duncan caught a look which he was glad to
construe into an expression that he was not entirely deserted by hope.

Magua was content with his success, or too much occupied with his secret
purposes to push his inquiries any further. Shaking his mantle, and
folding it on his bosom, he also quitted the place, without pursuing a
subject which might have proved so fatal to the individual at his elbow.
Notwithstanding his rising resentment, his natural firmness, and his
anxiety on behalf of Uncas, Heyward felt sensibly relieved by the
absence of so dangerous and so subtle a foe. The excitement produced
by the speech gradually subsided. The warriors resumed their seats and
clouds of smoke once more filled the lodge. For near half an hour, not
a syllable was uttered, or scarcely a look cast aside; a grave and
meditative silence being the ordinary succession to every scene of
violence and commotion among these beings, who were alike so impetuous
and yet so self-restrained.

When the chief, who had solicited the aid of Duncan, finished his pipe,
he made a final and successful movement toward departing. A motion of a
finger was the intimation he gave the supposed physician to follow; and
passing through the clouds of smoke, Duncad was glad, on more accounts
than one, to be able at last to breathe the pure air of a cool and
refreshing summer evening.

Instead of pursuing his way among those lodges where Heyward had already
made his unsuccessful search, his companion turned aside, and proceeded
directly toward the base of an adjacent mountain, which overhung the
temporary village. A thicket of brush skirted its foot, and it became
necessary to proceed through a crooked and narrow path. The boys had
resumed their sports in the clearing, and were enacting a mimic chas