faction in the late trials to forego
their expectations of a gratifying exhibition, and there was but one
voice in the request to proceed. The politic chief, who had some such
desire to receive so celebrated a hunter into his tribe, as a European
Minister has to devise a new and available means of taxation, sought
every plausible means of arresting the trial in season, for he well
knew, if permitted to go far enough to arouse the more ferocious
passions of the tormentors, it would be as easy to dam the waters of
the great lakes of his own region, as to attempt to arrest them in their
bloody career. He therefore called four or five of the best marksmen to
him, and bid them put the captive to the proof of the rifle, while
at the same time he cautioned them touching the necessity of their
maintaining their own credit, by the closest attention to the manner of
exhibiting their skill.

When Deerslayer saw the chosen warriors step into the circle, with their
arms prepared for service, he felt some such relief as the miserable
sufferer, who has long endured the agonies of disease, feels at the
certain approach of death. Any trifling variance in the aim of this
formidable weapon would prove fatal; since, the head being the target,
or rather the point it was desired to graze without injuring, an inch or
two of difference in the line of projection must at once determine the
question of life or death.

In the torture by the rifle there was none of the latitude permitted
that appeared in the case of even Gessler's apple, a hair's breadth
being, in fact, the utmost limits that an expert marksman would allow
himself on an occasion like this. Victims were frequently shot through
the head by too eager or unskilful hands, and it often occurred that,
exasperated by the fortitude and taunts of the prisoner, death was
dealt intentionally in a moment of ungovernable irritation. All this
Deerslayer well knew, for it was in relating the traditions of such
scenes, as well as of the battles and victories of their people, that
the old men beguiled the long winter evenings in their cabins. He
now fully expected the end of his career, and experienced a sort of
melancholy pleasure in the idea that he was to fall by a weapon as much
beloved as the rifle. A slight interruption, however, took place before
the business was allowed to proceed.

Hetty Hutter witnessed all that passed, and the scene at first had
pressed upon her feeble mind in a way to