without his clothes he is in a far worse case. The winds of heaven
play round his nakedness; every thorn and twig is his assailant, and
the whole of him seems a mark for the arrows of his foes. That
stripping was the thing that brought me to my senses. I recognized that
I was to be the subject of those hellish tortures which the Indians
use, the tales of which are on every Borderer's lips.

And yet I did not recognize it fully, or my courage must have left me
then and there. My imagination was still limping, and I foresaw only a
death of pain, not the horrid incidents of its preparation. Death I
could face, and I summoned up every shred of my courage. Ringan's voice
was still in my ear, his airy songs still sang themselves in my brain.
I would not shame him, but oh! how I envied him lying, all troubles
past, in his quiet grave!

The night was mild, and the yellow radiance of the moon seemed almost
warmth-giving. I sat on that log in a sort of stupor, watching my
enemies preparing my entertainment. One thing I noted, that there were
no women in the camp. I remembered that I had heard that the most
devilish tortures were those which the squaws devised, and that the
Indian men were apt to be quicker and more merciful in their
murderings.

Then I was lifted up and carried to a flat space beside the stream,
where the trunk of a young pine had been set upright in the ground. A
man, waving a knife, and singing a wild song, danced towards me. He
seized me by the hair, and I actually rejoiced, for I knew that the
pain of scalping would make me oblivious of all else. But he only drew
the sharp point of the knife in a circle round my head, scarce breaking
the skin.

I had grace given me to keep a stout face, mainly because I was
relieved that this was to be my fate. He put the knife back in his
girdle, and others laid hold on me.

They smeared my lower limbs with some kind of grease which smelt of
resin. One savage who had picked up a brand from one of the little
fires dropped some of the stuff on it, and it crackled merrily. He
grinned at me--a slow, diabolical grin.

They lashed me to the stake with ropes of green vine. Then they piled
dry hay a foot deep around me, and laid above it wood and green
branches. To make the fuel still greener, they poured water on it. At
the moment I did not see the object of these preparations, but now I
can understand it. The dry hay would serve to burn my legs, which had
already been ano