s at a distance, faintly heard at first, but growing every moment
more audible. In a minute two young warriors, who seemed to come by a
shorter way than the usual path, broke through the shrubs, and took
their station, without speaking a word, by the party who were
conducting the prisoner. Presently a crowd of women and children from
the village appeared in the path, shouting and singing songs of
victory; and these were followed by a group of old men, who walked in
grave silence. As soon as they came up, the party resumed their march,
and led their prisoner in triumph to the village.

The village consisted of a cluster of cabins, irregularly scattered,
as Indian villages always are, over a large space. It stood in a
natural opening of the great forest, on the banks of a stream which
brawled over a shallow, stony bottom between rocky banks, on its way
to mingle with the Great River. The Indian name of this wild stream
was Mawenawasigh.

It happened well for the captive youth that the chiefs and principal
warriors of the tribe were absent on a hunting expedition, and it was
necessary, in so grave a matter, to delay the decision of the
prisoner's fate until their return, which was expected in a few suns.
He was therefore taken to an unoccupied cabin and placed on a mat,
bound hand and foot, and fastened with a strong cord made of the
sinews of the deer to a tall post in the centre, supporting the roof.
It was the office of one of his captors to keep watch over him during
the day time, and at night two of them slept in his cabin. For the
first two suns his prison was thronged with the idle, the revengeful,
and the curious. The relatives of the drowned man, and of him who was
slain below the Mountains, came to taunt him on his helplessness, to
assure him of the certainty of death by torture, and to exult in the
prospect of a deadly vengeance. They pointed to him a stake driven in
the earth, to which a young Mohegan should be lashed, and a fire
kindled around him of the driest materials, while hot pincers were
applied to know when his flesh was sufficiently roasted, to form a
suitable dish for the banquet. Others came and gazed at him with
unfeeling curiosity. I should have mentioned to my brother that he was
of Mohawk parents, the son of a warrior adopted into a Mohegan tribe,
and that he possessed the stately and manly form, and the bold look,
and the calm eye, which belongs to the former nation, and may be
traced whereve