wn loss, but she motioned them away, impatiently with her hand. At
times her fingers played in the matted hair of the dead, and at others
they lightly attempted to smooth the painfully expressive muscles of its
ghastly visage, as the hand of the mother is seen lingering fondly about
the features of her sleeping child. Then starting from their revolting
office, her hands would flutter around her, and seem to seek some
fruitless remedy against the violent blow, which had thus suddenly
destroyed the child in whom she had not only placed her greatest
hopes, but so much of her maternal pride. While engaged in the
latter incomprehensible manner, the lethargic Abner turned aside, and
swallowing the unwonted emotions which were rising in his own throat, he
observed--

"Mother means that we should look for the signs, that we may know in
what manner Asa has come by his end."

"We owe it to the accursed Siouxes!" answered Ishmael: "twice have
they put me deeply in their debt! The third time, the score shall be
cleared!"

But, not content with this plausible explanation, and, perhaps,
secretly glad to avert their eyes from a spectacle which awakened so
extraordinary and unusual sensations in their sluggish bosoms, the sons
of the squatter turned away in a body from their mother and the corpse,
and proceeded to make the enquiries which they fancied the former had
so repeatedly demanded. Ishmael made no objections; but, though he
accompanied his children while they proceeded in the investigation, it
was more with the appearance of complying with their wishes, at a time
when resistance might not be seemly, than with any visible interest in
the result. As the borderers, notwithstanding their usual dulness, were
well instructed in most things connected with their habits of life, an
enquiry, the success of which depended so much on signs and evidences
that bore so strong a resemblance to a forest trail, was likely to be
conducted with skill and acuteness. Accordingly, they proceeded to the
melancholy task with great readiness and intelligence.

Abner and Enoch agreed in their accounts as to the position in which
they had found the body. It was seated nearly upright, the back
supported by a mass of matted brush, and one hand still grasping a
broken twig of the alders. It was most probably owing to the former
circumstance that the body had escaped the rapacity of the carrion
birds, which had been seen hovering above the thicket, and th