in bracing their nerves to undergo some unlooked-for and unusual trial.
Silently, and without a moment's delay, they permitted him to assist
them from their saddles, when they descended quickly to the water's
edge, where the scout had collected the rest of the party, more by the
agency of expressive gestures than by any use of words.

"What to do with these dumb creatures!" muttered the white man, on whom
the sole control of their future movements appeared to devolve; "it
would be time lost to cut their throats, and cast them into the river;
and to leave them here, would be to tell the Mingos that they have not
far to seek to find their owners!"

"Then give them their bridles, and let them range the woods," Heyward
ventured to suggest.

"No; it would be better to mislead the imps, and make them believe they
must equal a horse's speed to run down their chase. Ay, ay, that will
blind their fire-balls of eyes! Chingach--Hist? what stirs the bush?"

"The colt."

"That colt, at least, must die," muttered the scout, grasping the mane
of the nimble beast, which easily eluded his hand; "Uncas, your arrows!"

"Hold!" exclaimed the proprietor of the condemned animal, aloud, without
regard to the whispering tones used by the others; "spare the foal of
Miriam! it is the comely offspring of a faithful dam, and would
willingly injure naught."

"When men struggle for the single life God has given them," said the
scout sternly, "even their own kind seem no more than the beasts of the
wood. If you speak again, I shall leave you to the mercy of the Maquas!
Draw to your arrow's head, Uncas; we have no time for second blows."

The low, muttering sounds of his threatening voice were still audible,
when the wounded foal, first rearing on its hinder legs, plunged forward
to its knees. It was met by Chingachgook, whose knife passed across its
throat quicker than thought, and then precipitating the motions of the
struggling victim, he dashed it into the river, down whose stream it
glided away, gasping audibly for breath with its ebbing life. This deed
of apparent cruelty, but of real necessity, fell upon the spirits of the
travellers like a terrific warning of the peril in which they stood,
heightened as it was by the calm though steady resolution of the actors
in the scene. The sisters shuddered and clung closer to each other,
while Heyward instinctively laid his hand on one of the pistols he had
just drawn from their holsters, as he