While the events just chronicled were enacting in one part of the country, others, of a different nature, but somewhat connected with them, were taking place in another.  In a dark, lonely pass or gorge of the hills, some ten miles to the north of the scene of the preceding chapter, where the surrounding trees grew so thick with branches and leaves that they almost entirely excluded the sunlight from the waters of a stream which there rolled foaming and roaring between the hills and over and against the rocks of its precipitous bed, or, plunging down some frightful precipice, lay as if stunned or exhausted by the fall in the chasm below, mirroring in its still bosom with a gloomy reflection the craggy steeps rising majestically above it—­in this dark and lonely pass, we say, was a party of human beings, to whom the proper development of our story now calls us.

The company in question was composed of eight persons, five of whom were Indians of the Seneca tribe;[5] the others—­a thin-faced, gaunt, stoop-shouldered man past the middle age—­a rather corpulent, masculine looking woman, a few years his junior—­a little fair-haired, blue-eyed, pretty-faced girl of six—­were white captives.  Four of the Indians were seated or partly reclining on the ground, with their guns beside them, ready for instant use if necessary, engaged in roasting slices of deer meat before a fire that had been kindled for the purpose.  The fifth savage was pacing to and fro, with his rifle on his arm, performing the double duty of sentinel and guard over the prisoners, who were kept in durance by strong cords some ten paces distant.  The old man was secured by a stick passing across his back horizontally, to which both wrists and arms were tightly bound with thongs of deer skin.  To prevent the possibility of escape, both legs were fastened together by the same material, and a long, stout rope, encircling his neck, was attached to a tree hard by.  This latter precaution, and much of the former, seemed unnecessary; for there was a mild look of resigned dejection on his features, as they bent toward the earth, with his chin resting on his bosom, that appeared strongly at variance with any thing like flight or strife.  His female companion was fastened in like manner to the tree, but in other respects only bound by a stout thong around the wrists in front.  The third member of the white party, the little girl, was seated at the feet of the old man, with her small wrists also bound until they had swollen so as to pain her, looking up from time to time into his face with a heart-rending expression of grief, fear and anxiety.