ition,
nor was it apparently without reason, for the moment Mrs. Elmsley
beheld him, she uttered an involuntary shriek, and drew back with
every manifestation of disgust. The Indian remarked it, and sought
to retire, but Mrs. Elmsley, suddenly recollecting herself, and
fearing so to offend him as to prevent the aid he had come to
render, rose and held out her hand to him, saying, with an attempt
at a smile--

"Never mind--although we have fought a hard battle together
to-day, it is all over now. Let us be friends. Winnebeg, explain
this to him."

Winnebeg did so, when, with a mingled look of astonishment and
pleasure, the Pottowatomie warmly returned her pressure. It was
the same warrior with whom she had grappled, in the desperation of
a last hope, when so opportunely extricated from her perilous
position by Black Partridge. As he had the reputation of much
expertness in making incisions and removing balls lodged in the
flesh, his attendance had been requested.

Calm and composed, although evidently laboring under deep dejection
for the loss of her uncle, the horrible mode of whose death had,
however, been kept back from her, Mrs. Headley, dressed in the
light-textured riding habit in which she had gone forth in the
morning, and which, it has already been remarked, set off her finely
moulded bust and waist to the best advantage, prepared to submit
herself to the operation. As she raised herself up on the ottoman
on which she reclined, Mrs. Elmsley cut open the sleeve to the
shoulder, thus laying bare one of the most magnificent arms that
ever was appended to a woman's body, the dazzling whiteness of
whose contour was only dimmed in the fleshy part above, and in the
immediate vicinity of the spot where the ball had entered.

At a sign from Captain Headley, the Indian, who had been talking
aside with his chief, now approached, but no sooner did he behold
the uncovered limb, when, either dazzled by its brilliancy, which
to him must have seemed in a great degree superhuman, or shocked
that anything so beautiful should have been thus wounded, he suddenly
stopped, and while his eyes were as if fascinated, the blood could
be seen suddenly to recede from his dark cheek.

"No, father," he said to Winnebeg, "I cannot do it. I cannot cut
that arm open--the very thought makes me sick here"--and he pointed
to his heart. "I cannot do it."

Although this involuntary homage to the rich, full, and moulded
beauty of a limb whi