fear he might again be captured, and forced to a lingering, agonizing death!—­how he shuddered as he thought, until his flesh felt chill and clammy, and cold drops of perspiration, wrung forth by mental agony, stood upon his pale features!  Even death, before his escape, possessed not half the terrors for him it would have now; for then he had nerved himself to meet it, and prepared himself for the worst; but now he had again had a taste of freedom, and would feel the reverse in a thousand accumulated horrors.

Thus for a few minutes he lay, in painful thought, when he became aware, by the different sounds, that many of the savages were returning.  Presently some two or three paused by the rock, and beat back the bushes around it.  Then, dropping upon his knees, one of the Indians actually put his head to the ground, and peered up into the cavity.  It was a horrible moment of suspense to Algernon, as he beheld the hideous visage of the savage so near, and evidently gazing upon him; and thinking himself discovered, he was on the point of coming forth, when a certain vagueness in the look of the Indian, led him to hope he was not yet perceived; and he lay motionless, with his breath suspended.  But, alas! his hope was soon changed to despair; for after gazing a moment longer, the Indian suddenly started, his features expressed satisfaction, he uttered a significant grunt, and, springing to his feet, gave a loud, long, peculiar whoop.  The next moment our hero was roughly seized, and, ere he could exert himself at all, dragged forth by the heels, by which means his limbs and body became not a little bruised and lacerated.

The savages now came running towards their prisoner from all quarters, in high glee at his recapture—­being attracted hither, probably, by the signal whoop of success made by the one who first discovered him.  Among the rest came Girty; who, as he approached Algernon, burst into a loud laugh, saying, in a jocular manner: 

“Well, my fine bird, so you are caught again, eh?  I was most infernally afraid you had got away in earnest; I was, by ——!  But we’ll soon fix you now, so that you won’t run away again in a hurry.”

Then turning to the savages around him, the renegade continued his remarks in the Indian tongue, occasionally laughing boisterously, in which they not unfrequently joined.  In this manner, the whole party returned in triumph to the village—­being met on their way thither by the women and children, who set up yells of delight, sung and danced around their prisoner, whom they beat with their fists and with sticks, until he became sore from head to heel.

The gauntlet was soon again made ready, and Algernon started upon the race; but fatigued in body and mind, from the late events—­weak and faint from the bleeding of his wound and bruises—­he scarcely reached twenty paces down the lines, ere he sunk overpowered to the earth; from which he was immediately raised, and borne forward to the council-house, where, according to the Indian custom, the chiefs and warriors were to decide upon his fate.