e had been
regarded, could not help foreboding the terrible fate that must await
them if their lives lay at the mercy of that revengeful savage whom he
had once made bite the dust.

By this time the allied English and Indian armies were all astir, and
the disorderly retreat began afresh, Tecumseh keeping his Indian brigade
half a mile in the rear of the regulars. Toward the middle of the
afternoon the party that had the white prisoners in keeping, having
gradually fallen behind the line of march, abruptly turned into the
mouth of a dingle which, deep and shadowy, opened gloomily into the
valley of the Thames. Here, for the first time since morning, our
luckless hunters spied Black Thunder, where a little farther within the
dingle, as if there in waiting for them, he was vehemently, though not
loudly, haranguing some fifteen or twenty of his warriors who, clustered
in a close red knot before him, were taking in with ravenous ears his
every word. Evidently the evil, foreboded by Burl in the morning, was in
some shape near at hand, for a fierce gesture flung toward them from
time to time by the speaker, with the vengeful glances of his listeners
in the same direction, told but too plainly the drift of the harangue.
At length, as if to make the surer of their savage sympathies and give
the climax to his barbarous appeal, Black Thunder suddenly threw back
his robe and disclosed to view two scars--a deep and ugly one in the
arm, a long and ghastly one athwart the breast. Whereat uprose a chorus
of yells expressive not so much of savage sympathy as of savage delight.
The moment after, seized foot, with brush-wood to feed the devouring
flames heaped up against him to his shoulders, there stood Big Black
Burl, a victim doomed to the fiery tortures of the death-stake.

Helpless himself, Captain Reynolds could not choose but stand where he
was and become a witness of the harrowing spectacle--too harrowing for
any Christian eye to behold, even were the victim but the poor dumb
brute, who has only his howlings to tell of his agony; but that his
affectionate, faithful, brave old Burl should ever have come to a fate
so terrible, wrung his heart with unshakable anguish--anguish the
keener, when he reflected that this had never been but for that very
heroism which, on a beautiful summer morning in the days long gone, had
wrought deliverance to him, a forlorn little captive, and restored him
to the love of a lone and widowed mother. O t