came in
a boat. One day when Hutter and his friends were absent from the
'Castle,' the Hurons took possession of it, and when Hutter and Hurry
returned they knew that they had fallen into a complete trap. Only a
short time previously, Hurry's reckless spirit had led him to commit an
act of wanton cruelty,--that of raising his gun and firing from the
canoe in which he was seated into the woods. His random shot struck down
an Indian girl, and caused her death, so that the Hurons felt no
goodwill towards him. The Indians knew, too, that Tom and Hutter would
have been only too willing to attack any of their party should it lie
within their power to do so. Hurry, whose conduct towards his foes had
been ferocious, was captured by means of a rope of bark, having an eye,
which was thrown so dexterously that the end threaded the eye, forming a
noose and drawing his elbows together behind his back with a power that
all his gigantic strength could not resist. A similar fastening secured
his ankles, and his body was rolled over on to the ground, as helpless
as a log of wood.

Hutter fared even worse, for he was found by his daughters wounded, and
in a dying condition.

'Oh, Judith!' exclaimed poor, weak-witted Hetty, as soon as they had
attended to the sufferer, 'Father went for scalps himself, and now where
is his own? The Bible might have foretold this dreadful punishment.'

A different scene is that which tells what befell Deerslayer when he
fell into the hands of the foe. They had let him out on furlough, well
knowing that they could trust his word. It was in vain that his friends
in 'Muskrat Castle' tried to persuade him that he was not obliged to
keep faith with such a cruel foe. Deerslayer was firm. A promise to
return had been given, and it must be kept, for God had heard it, and
God would look for its fulfilment. Well he knew that the cruelties of
the Indians would be practised on him, and that he would be put to the
'tortures'--the young Indians, all of whom hoped to become warriors,
would not, he knew, hesitate to subject him to such woes that even to
read of them makes one's heart sink. Yet this knowledge could not deter
him from keeping faith with them.

Bound so tightly to a tree that he could not stir an inch, he was
obliged to submit while the various young men of the Indian tribes threw
their tomahawks so as to strike the tree as near the victim's head as
possible without hitting him. His nerves stood the terr