“If there was danger to none but ourselves, truly, thee should go with us and welcome,” said Nathan; representing, justly enough, the little service that Roland, destitute of the requisite knowledge and skill, could be expected to render, and the dangers he must necessarily bring upon the others, in case of any, the most ordinary, difficulties arising in their progress through the village.  Everything must now depend upon address, upon cunning and presence of mind; the least indiscretion (and how many might not the soldier, his feelings wound up to a pitch of the intensest excitement, commit?) must of necessity terminate in the instant destruction of all.  In short, Roland was convinced, though sorely against his will, that wisdom and affection both called on him to play the part Nathan had assigned him; and he submitted to be ruled accordingly,—­with the understanding, however, that the rendezvous, in which he was to await the operations of the others, should be upon the very borders of the village, whence he might, in any pressing emergency, in case of positive danger and conflict, be immediately called to their assistance.

When the twilight had darkened away, and the little river, rippling along on its course, sparkled only in the light of the stars, the three friends crept from their retreat, and descended boldly into the valley; where, guided by the barking of dogs, the occasional yells of a drunken or gamesome savage, and now and then the red glare of a fire flashing from the open crannies of a cabin, they found little difficulty in approaching the Indian village.  It was situated on the further bank of the stream, and, as described, just behind the bend of the vale, at the bottom of a rugged, but not lofty hill; which, jutting almost into the river, left yet space enough for the forty or fifty lodges composing the village, sheltering them in winter from the bitter blasts that rush, at that season, from the northern lakes.  Beyond the river, on the side towards the travellers, the vale was broader; and it was there the Indians had chiefly planted their corn-fields,—­fields enriched by the labour, perhaps also by the tears, of their oppressed and degraded women.

Arriving at the borders of the cultivated grounds, the three adventurers crossed the river, which was neither broad nor deep, and stealing among logs and stumps at the foot of the hill, where some industrious savage had, in former years, begun to clear a field, which, however, his wives had never planted, they lay down in concealment, waiting until the subsiding of the unusual bustle in the village, a consequence manifestly of the excesses which Nathan predicted the victors would indulge in, should render their further advance practicable.  But this was not the work of a moment.  The savage can drink and dance through the night with as lusty a zeal as his white neighbour; the song, the jest, the merry tale, are as dear to his imagination; and in the retirement of his own village, feeling no longer the restraint of stolid gravity,—­assumed in the haunts of the white man, less to play the part of a hero than to cover the nakedness of his own inferiority,—­he can give himself up to wild indulgence, the sport of whim and frolic; and, when the fire-water is the soul of the feast, the feast only ends with the last drop of liquor.