“That’s a purty question for you to ask, after there for dead this half-hour almost”

“Have the Indians been here?” asked Joe, staring round wildly.

“Hain’t you heard us shooting?”

“My goodness,” cried Joe, springing up.  “Oh! am I wounded? say!” he continued, evincing the most lively alarm.

“Well, if this don’t beat every thing that ever I saw in all my life, I wish I may be shot!” said Sneak.

“What is it?” asked Joe, his senses yet wandering.

“Jest feel the back of your head,” said Sneak.  Joe put his hand to the place indicated, and winced under the pain of the touch.  He then looked at his hand, and beholding a quantity of clotted blood upon it, fell down suddenly on the snow.

“What’s the matter now?” asked Glenn, who had seen his man sitting up, and came swiftly to him when he fell.

“I’m a dead man!” said Joe, mournfully.

“That’s a lie!” said Sneak.

“What ails you, Joe?” asked Glenn, his tone much softened.

“I’m dying—­oh!  I’m shot through the head!”

“Don’t believe him, Mr. Glenn—­I’ll be smashed if its any thing but my tooth,” said Sneak.

“Oh—­I’m dying!” continued Joe, pressing his hand against his head, while the pain and loss of blood actually produced a faintness, and his voice became very weak.

“Are you really much hurt?” continued Glenn, stooping down, and feeling his pulse.

“It’s all over!” muttered Joe.  “I’m going fast.  Sancte Petre!—­Pater noster, qui es in coelis, sanctificeter nomen tuum; adveniat regnum tu—­”

Here Joe’s voice failed, and, falling into a syncope, Glenn and Sneak lifted him up and carried him into the house.

“Is he shot?” exclaimed Mary, instantly producing some lint and bandages which she had prepared in anticipation of such an event.

“I fear he has received a serious hurt,” said Glenn, aiding Mary, who had proceeded at once to bind up the wound.

“I’ll be split if he’s shot!” said Sneak, going out and returning to his post.  Glenn did likewise when he saw the first indications of returning consciousness in his man; and Mary was left alone to restore and nurse poor Joe.  But he could not have been in better hands.

“I should like to know something about them curious words the feller was speaking when he keeled over,” said Sneak, as he looked out at the now quiet scene from the loophole, and mused over the events of the night.  “I begin to believe that the feller’s a going to die.  I don’t believe any man could talk so, if he wasn’t dying.”

“Have you seen any of them lately?” inquired Boone, coming to Sneak’s post and running his eye along the horizon through the loophole.

“Not a one,” replied Sneak, “except that feller laying out yander by the snowball.”

“He’s dead,” said Boone, “and he is the only one that we are sure of having killed to-night.  But many are wounded.”