e are four able bodies, to one wounded man!"

"Is life grievous to you?" interrupted the scout. "Yonder red devils
would draw you within swing of the tomahawks of his comrades, before you
were heated in the chase. It was an unthoughtful act in a man who has so
often slept with the war-whoop ringing in the air, to let off his piece
within sound of an ambushment! But then it was a natural temptation!
'twas very natural! Come, friends, let us move our station, and in such
a fashion, too, as will throw the cunning of a Mingo on a wrong scent,
or our scalps will be drying in the wind in front of Montcalm's marquee,
ag'in this hour to-morrow."

This appalling declaration, which the scout uttered with the cool
assurance of a man who fully comprehended, while he did not fear to face
the danger, served to remind Heyward of the importance of the charge
with which he himself had been intrusted. Glancing his eyes around, with
a vain effort to pierce the gloom that was thickening beneath the leafy
arches of the forest, he felt as if, cut off from human aid, his
unresisting companions would soon lie at the entire mercy of those
barbarous enemies, who, like beasts of prey, only waited till the
gathering darkness might render their blows more fatally certain. His
awakened imagination, deluded by the deceptive light, converted each
waving bush, or the fragment of some fallen tree, into human forms, and
twenty times he fancied he could distinguish the horrid visages of his
lurking foes, peering from their hiding-places, in never-ceasing
watchfulness of the movements of his party. Looking upward, he found
that the thin fleecy clouds, which evening had painted on the blue sky,
were already losing their faintest tints of rose-color, while the
imbedded stream, which glided past the spot where he stood, was to be
traced only by the dark boundary of its wooded banks.

"What is to be done?" he said, feeling the utter helplessness of doubt
in such a pressing strait; "desert me not, for God's sake! remain to
defend those I escort, and freely name your own reward!"

His companions, who conversed apart in the language of their tribe,
heeded not this sudden and earnest appeal. Though their dialogue was
maintained in low and cautious sounds, but little above a whisper,
Heyward, who now approached, could easily distinguish the earnest tones
of the younger warrior from the more deliberate speeches of his seniors.
It was evident that they debated on