re, in delighted surprise at the unlooked-for
turn their ugly adventure had taken, he had stood the while, and now,
with the liveliest interest, was awaiting the upshot. Then, as if
comprehending fully the circumstances of the case, the chief ordered
Black Thunder to restore both prisoners their arms and accouterments,
and whatever else had been taken from them--a command sullenly but
promptly obeyed. All being ready, their deliverer, speaking again in
English, but this time addressing himself to the white man, said,
"Follow me!" and, setting his face westward, led the captives from the
spot. To avoid the risk he must run of falling in with the American
scouts or pickets, their guide ascended at once into the upland forest,
through whose shadows lay not only their most secret but shortest
route. As they gained the summit of the steep overlooking the dingle
where his death-pile had been kindled, the Fighting Nigger--the
Preaching Nigger fast asleep within him--made a momentary pause. Waving
his bear-skin war-cap loftily over his head, he sent down to Black
Thunder, triumphantly and defiantly, his old war-cry, so often heard in
the stormy days of long-ago in the land of the Dark and Bloody Ground,
now filling those Canadian wilds with gigantic echoes which, flying
affrightedly hither and thither, for full three minutes thereafter kept
hill-top saying to hill-top, dingle to dingle, "I yi, you dogs!"

Chapter XX.

HOW KUMSHAKAH FIGURED IN THE LIGHT OF THE SETTING SUN.

The red man foremost, the black man hindmost, and the white man between,
silently, swiftly they wended their way through the mazes, green and
brown, of the autumn-painted forest. "What manner of man is this," the
young Kentuckian could not but say to himself, "at whose voice the
fierce, unruly warriors of the wilderness stay their barbarous hands,
from before the glance of whose eye their doughtiest champions quail,
and under whose hand the captive goes forth again into life and
freedom?"

Having with his war-cry eased his heart in a measure of the surplus joy
and triumph he felt at their deliverance, Big Black Burl could now
content himself to go for a mile or more without speaking a word. He
failed not, however, to steal from time to time a prying glance at their
deliverer from over his master's shoulder. At the first glance nothing
in particular struck his mind, excepting that he thought the red
stranger was a wondrously handsome and gallant-lo