many as he brought. He was a great favorite with the
whites, who appreciated his chivalrous faithfulness and fidelity, and
loaded him with many expressions of their esteem. He had the
reputation of being the fleetest runner, the most successful scout and
best hunter in the West. Volumes would be required to record all the
exploits told of him--of the marvelous number of scalps which hung in
his lodge, and of the many hair-breadth escapes he had had. It was
said he had a wife and child hid somewhere in the recesses of the
forest, to whom he made stated visits, and whom his deadly enemies, the
Shawnees, had sought in vain for years. He was now about thirty-five
years of age, and had been known as a scout and friend of the whites
for full a dozen years.

Somewhat less than two years after the first meeting of Lieutenant
Canfield with the daughter of Captain Prescott, the wife and eldest
daughter of the latter made a journey of pleasure to a neighboring
settlement. Mary would have accompanied them, had she not received an
intimation from Oonomoo that her lover proposed to make her a visit
about that time. She accordingly remained at home with the servants.

Two nights afterwards, when the darkness was almost impenetrable, a
large war-party of Shawnees suddenly attacked the place. The negroes
had no time for defense, and only sought their own safety in flight.
But one, however, escaped, the rest falling beneath the merciless
tomahawk. Mary Prescott was carried off a prisoner.

CHAPTER III.

OONOMOO AND THE SHAWNEES.

Through forty foes his path he made,
And safely reached the forest-glade.--SCOTT.

After parting from Hans Vanderbum, the Huron sped noiselessly through
the woods, taking a direction that would lead him to a point on the
river fully three hundred yards below where he had signaled the German.
The stream making a bend there, he would thus escape the observation of
the Shawnees along the bank, at the point where the fisherman had been
engaged in his labors.

So silent, yet rapid, was the motion of Oonomoo, that his figure
flitted through the rifts in the wood like a shadow. His head
projected slightly forward, in the attitude of acute attention, and his
black, restless eyes constantly flitted from one point to the other,
scarcely resting for a second upon any single object. In his left hand
he trailed his long rifle, while his right rested upon the buckhorn
handle of the knife in