When night came Isaac’s guards laced up the lodge-door and shut him from the sight of the maddened Indians.  The darkness that gradually enveloped him was a relief.  By and by all was silent except for the occasional yell of a drunken savage.  To Isaac it sounded like a long, rolling death-cry echoing throughout the encampment and murdering his sleep.  Its horrible meaning made him shiver and his flesh creep.  At length even that yell ceased.  The watch-dogs quieted down and the perfect stillness which ensued could almost be felt.  Through Isaac’s mind ran over and over again the same words.  His last night to live!  His last night to live!  He forced himself to think of other things.  He lay there in the darkness of his tent, but he was far away in thought, far away in the past with his mother and brothers before they had come to this bloodthirsty country.  His thoughts wandered to the days of his boyhood when he used to drive the sows to the pasture on the hillside, and in his dreamy, disordered fancy he was once more letting down the bars of the gate.  Then he was wading in the brook and whacking the green frogs with his stick.  Old playmates’ faces, forgotten for years, were there looking at him from the dark wall of his wigwam.  There was Andrew’s face; the faces of his other brothers; the laughing face of his sister; the serene face of his mother.  As he lay there with the shadow of death over him sweet was the thought that soon he would be reunited with that mother.  The images faded slowly away, swallowed up in the gloom.  Suddenly a vision appeared to him.  A radiant white light illumined the lodge and shone full on the beautiful face of the Indian maiden who had loved him so well.  Myeerah’s dark eyes were bright with an undying love and her lips smiled hope.

A rude kick dispelled Isaac’s dreams.  A brawny savage pulled him to his feet and pushed him outside of the lodge.

It was early morning.  The sun had just cleared the low hills in the east and its red beams crimsoned the edges of the clouds of fog which hung over the river like a great white curtain.  Though the air was warm, Isaac shivered a little as the breeze blew softly against his cheek.  He took one long look toward the rising sun, toward that east he had hoped to see, and then resolutely turned his face away forever.

Early though it was the Indians were astir and their whooping rang throughout the valley.  Down the main street of the village the guards led the prisoner, followed by a screaming mob of squaws and young braves and children who threw sticks and stones at the hated Long Knife.

Soon the inhabitants of the camp congregated on the green oval in the midst of the lodges.  When the prisoner appeared they formed in two long lines facing each other, and several feet apart.  Isaac was to run the gauntlet—­one of the severest of Indian tortures.  With the exception of Cornplanter and several of his chiefs, every Indian in the village was in line.  Little Indian boys hardly large enough to sling a stone; maidens and squaws with switches or spears; athletic young braves with flashing tomahawks; grim, matured warriors swinging knotted war clubs,—­all were there in line, yelling and brandishing their weapons in a manner frightful to behold.