The eyes of Quecheco flashed.  “Give me the stick,” he cried, “that makes a loud noise, and Quecheco will do a great thing.”

“I have done wrong,” thought the Knight, “in raising his expectations.  Nay, Quecheco,” he said, “it would be taken away from thee by the white men, and who would sell thee powder and ball!”

“Nin-e-yi-u wa-wee,” (it is well,) said the Indian.  “Soog-u-gest flies so high that he sees a great way, and Quecheco spoke like a pappoose.  What has he to do with guns?”

The gift of the gun would have diverted the savage from his purpose, by awakening the affection which covetousness had put to sleep, and probably altered the fate of Sir Christopher and himself; but the answer of the Knight dispelled the hope that for a single instant warmed the heart of Quecheco with better feeling, and he persisted in his original design.

They had walked several miles without seeing any game of importance, or such as was thought worthy of other attention than the arrows of the Indian, before they reached the spot indicated by him as where he had marked the deer the day previous.  It was a falsehood invented by Quecheco, and great was his astonishment, on approaching, to behold a herd of a dozen of these timid creatures.

It was a sort of lawn, of six or seven acres in extent, with a few trees scattered over it, where they were feeding.  The shape of the ground was an irregular oblong, in some places not more than a hundred yards across, and in others of double the distance, being like a basin, at a depression of twenty or thirty feet below where the Knight stood, concealed by trees and bushes.  At the bottom flowed a small, rapid stream, perhaps three rods wide, interposing itself betwixt him and the herd.  Sir Christopher had visited the locality before, and was familiar with its features; and expecting game, from the story of Quecheco, had taken care to approach with the wind in his face, to avoid the scent of his person being carried to the delicate nostrils of the animals while he stepped noiselessly along.  The Indian, in order the better to carry out his meditated deceit, had been imitating the Knight’s conduct, and on the discovery of the deer, his hunter’s instinct induced him to continue what his hypocrisy had begun.  Selecting the finest buck from the herd, Sir Christopher levelled his piece and fired.  A single instant stood, with erected heads, the beautiful creatures, as if stupefied with astonishment, and then all but one vanished in the wood—­all but the stricken buck, who made one bound, and fell to the earth.  The prodigious leap testified to the extremity of his terror and his hurt; and vain struggles to rise from his knees, to its fatal character.  With eyes fixed upon the struggling deer, the Knight reloaded his gun, and then bounded down the declivity after him.