“Now, by ——! young man, it’s your turn; and let me tell you, it will stand you in hand to do your best.  Come, let us see what sort of a figure you will cut.”

As he concluded, he severed the thongs around the hands of our hero, and unceremoniously began to strip him, in which he was aided by a couple of old squaws.

The features of Algernon were pale, but composed; and he allowed himself to be handled as one who felt an escape from his doom to be impossible, and who had nerved himself to undergo it with as much stoicism as he could command.  As his vestments were rent from his body, the wound in his side was discovered to be nearly healed; and would have been entirely so, probably, but for the irritation occasioned it of late by his long marches, exposure and fatigue, which had served to render it at present not a little painful.  As his eye for a moment rested upon it, his mind instantly reverted to its cause—­recalled, with the rapidity of thought, which is the swiftest comparison we can make, the many and important events that had since transpired up to the present time, wherein the gentle Ella Barnwell held no second place—­and he sighed, half aloud: 

“I would to Heaven it had been mortal!—­how much misery had then been spared me?”

As he said this, one of the squaws, who had been observing it intently, struck him thereon a violent blow with her fist, which started it to bleeding afresh, and, in spite of himself, caused Algernon to utter a sharp cry of pain, at which all laughed heartily.  Thinking doubtless this species of amusement as interesting as any, the old hag was on the point of repeating the blow, when Girty arrested it, by saying something to her in the Indian tongue, and all three turned aside, as if to consult together, leaving our hero standing alone, unbound.

A wild thought now suddenly thrilled him.  He was free, perchance he might escape; at least he could but die in the attempt; and that, at all events, was preferable to a lingering death of torture!  He looked hurriedly around.  Only the renegade and the squaws were close at hand, and they engaged in conversation.  The main body of the Indians were at a distance, awaiting him to run the gauntlet.  He needed no second thought to prompt him to the trial; and wheeling about, he placed his hand upon the wound, and bounded away with the fleetness of the deer.  In a moment the yells of an hundred savages in pursuit, sounded in his ear, and urged him onward to the utmost of his strength.  He was no mean runner at any time; now he was flying to save his life, and every nerve did its duty.  Before him was a slope, that stretched away to the river Miami; and down this he fled with a velocity that astonished himself; while yell after yell of the demons behind, now in full chase, were to him only so many death cries, to stimulate him to renewed exertions.  At last he gained the river and rushed into the water.  It was not deep,