with as much apparent vigour as ever, were gradually giving ground before the latter, and retreating towards their former lairs; while he could as clearly perceive, from Bruce’s expressions, that the intrepid Kentuckian was actually preparing to execute the very measure that had caused such loss to his enemies, and which, being thus resolved on, showed his confidence of victory.  “Ready, boys!” he heard him shout again, and even nigher than before;—­“take the shoot with full pieces, and let the skirmudgeons have it handsome!”

At that conjuncture, and just when Forrester caught his breath with intense and devouring expectation, an incident occurred which entirely changed the face of affairs, and snatched the victory from the hands of the Kentuckians.  The gallant Bruce, thus calling upon his followers to prepare for the charge, had scarce uttered the words recorded, before a voice, lustier even than his own, bellowed from a bush immediately on his rear,—­“Take it like a butcher’s bull-dog, tooth and nail!—­knife and skull-splitter, foot and finger, give it to ’em every way,—­cock-a-doodle-doo!”

At these words, coming from a quarter and from an ally entirely unexpected, young Bruce looked behind him and beheld, emerging from a hazel bush, through which it had just forced its way, the visage of Roaring Ralph Stackpole, its natural ugliness greatly increased by countless scratches and spots of blood, the result of his leap down the ledge of rocks, when first set upon by the Indians, and his eyes squinting daggers and ratsbane, especially while he was giving utterance to that gallinaceous slogan with which he was wont to express his appetite for conflict, and with which he now concluded his unceremonious salutation.

The voice and visage were alike familiar to Bruce’s senses, and neither was so well fitted to excite alarm as merriment.  But, on the present occasion, they produced an effect upon the young Regulator’s spirits, and through them upon his actions, the most unfortunate in the world; to understand which it must be recollected that the worthy Kentuckian had, twenty-four hours before, with his own hands, assisted in gibbeting honest Ralph on the beech tree, where, he had every reason to suppose, his lifeless body was hanging at that very moment.  His astonishment and horror may therefore be conceived, when, turning in some purturbation at the well known voice, he beheld that identical body, the corse of the executed horse-thief, crawling after him in the grass, “winking, and blinking, and squinting,” as he was used afterwards to say, “as if the devil had him by the pastern.”  It was a spectacle which the nerves of even Tom Bruce could not stand; it did what armed Indians could not do,—­it frightened him out of his propriety.  Forgetting his situation, his comrades, the savages,—­forgetting everything but the fact of his having administered the last correction of Lynch-law to the object of his terror, he sprang on his feet, and roaring, “By the etarnal devil, here’s Ralph Stackpole!” he took to his heels, running, in his confusion, right in the direction of the enemy, among whom he would have presently found himself, but for a shot, by which, before he had run six yards, the unfortunate youth was struck to the earth.