varlets are about the place, and any sounds that are not
natural to witchcraft would bring them back upon us in a body."

"Tell me the meaning of this masquerade; and why you have attempted so
desperate an adventure?"

"Ah, reason and calculation are often outdone by accident," returned the
scout. "But, as a story should always commence at the beginning, I will
tell you the whole in order. After we parted I placed the commandant
and the Sagamore in an old beaver lodge, where they are safer from
the Hurons than they would be in the garrison of Edward; for your
high north-west Indians, not having as yet got the traders among them,
continued to venerate the beaver. After which Uncas and I pushed for the
other encampment as was agreed. Have you seen the lad?"

"To my great grief! He is captive, and condemned to die at the rising of
the sun."

"I had misgivings that such would be his fate," resumed the scout, in
a less confident and joyous tone. But soon regaining his naturally firm
voice, he continued: "His bad fortune is the true reason of my being
here, for it would never do to abandon such a boy to the Hurons. A rare
time the knaves would have of it, could they tie 'The Bounding Elk' and
'The Long Carabine', as they call me, to the same stake! Though why they
have given me such a name I never knew, there being as little likeness
between the gifts of 'killdeer' and the performance of one of your real
Canada carabynes, as there is between the natur' of a pipe-stone and a
flint."

"Keep to your tale," said the impatient Heyward; "we know not at what
moment the Hurons may return."

"No fear of them. A conjurer must have his time, like a straggling
priest in the settlements. We are as safe from interruption as a
missionary would be at the beginning of a two hours' discourse. Well,
Uncas and I fell in with a return party of the varlets; the lad was much
too forward for a scout; nay, for that matter, being of hot blood, he
was not so much to blame; and, after all, one of the Hurons proved a
coward, and in fleeing led him into an ambushment."

"And dearly has he paid for the weakness."

The scout significantly passed his hand across his own throat, and
nodded, as if he said, "I comprehend your meaning." After which he
continued, in a more audible though scarcely more intelligible language:

"After the loss of the boy I turned upon the Hurons, as you may judge.
There have been scrimmages atween one or two of their outly