rted the other. "They only
prick the skin like a thorn; but when Wacousta drinks the blood of his
enemy," and he glanced his eye fiercely at the young man, "it is the
blood next his heart."

"My brother has always big words upon his lips," returned the young
chief, with a scornful sneer at the implied threat against himself.
"But where are his proofs?"

For a moment the eye of the party thus challenged kindled into flame,
while his lips were firmly compressed together; and as he half bent
himself forward, to scan with greater earnestness the features of his
questioner, his right hand sank to his left side, tightly grasping the
handle of his scalping-knife. The action was but momentary. Again he
drew himself up, puffed the smoke deliberately from his bloody
tomahawk, and, thrusting his right hand into his bosom, drew leisurely
forth a reeking scalp, which he tossed insolently across the fire into
the lap of the young chief. A loud and general "ugh!" testified the
approbation of the assembled group, at the unequivocal answer thus
given to the demand of the youth. The eye of the huge warrior sparkled
with a deep and ferocious exultation.

"What says the smooth face of the Ottawas now?" he demanded, in the
same insolent strain. "Does it make his heart sick to look upon the
scalp of a great chief?"

The young man quietly turned the horrid trophy over several times in
his hand, examining it attentively in every part. Then tossing it back
with contemptuous coolness to its owner, he replied,--

"The eyes of my brother are weak with age. He is not cunning, like a
red skin. The Ottawa has often seen the Saganaw in their fort, and he
knows their chiefs have fine hair like women; but this is like the
bristles of the fox. My brother has not slain a great chief, but a
common warrior."

A flush of irrepressible and threatening anger passed over the features
of the vast savage.

"Is it for a boy," he fiercely asked, "whose eyes know not yet the
colour of blood, to judge of the enemies that fall by the tomahawk of
Wacousta? but a great warrior never boasts of actions that he does not
achieve. It is the son of the great chief of the Saganaw whom he has
slain. If the smooth face doubts it, and has courage to venture, even
at night, within a hundred yards of the fort, he will see a Saganaw
without a scalp; and he will know that Saganaw by his dress--the
dress," he pursued, with a low emphatic laugh, "that Oucanasta, the
sister of