“How foolish I have been,” said he, to himself.  “Because Pierre is ugly, like all the rest of his race, and because he always carries a knife in his belt, and hates Marmion, I have been willing to believe him capable of any villainy.  I don’t suppose he has thought of that gold since he saw me lock it up.”

As Frank said this, he pulled his chair into the room, and selecting Cooper’s “Last of the Mohicans” from the numerous volumes in the library, he dismissed all thoughts of the Ranchero, and sat down to read until he should become sleepy.  He soon grew so deeply interested in his book, that he did not hear the light step that sounded on the porch, nor did he see the dark, glittering eyes which looked steadily at him through the open window.  He saw them a moment afterward, however, for, while he was absorbed in that particular part of the fight at Glen’s Falls, where Hawk-Eye snapped his unloaded rifle at the Indian who was making off with the canoe in which the scout had left his ammunition, a figure glided quickly but noiselessly into the room, and stopped behind the boy’s chair.

“Now, my opinion is that Hawk-Eye was not much of a backwoodsman, after all,” said Frank, who was in the habit of commenting upon and criticising every thing he read.  “Why did he leave his extra powder-horn in his canoe, when he knew that the Hurons were all around him?  You wouldn’t catch Dick or old Bob Kelly in any such scrape, nor me either, for that matter, for I would”—­

Frank’s soliloquy was brought to a close very suddenly, and what he was about to say must forever remain a secret.  His throat was seized with an iron grasp, and he was lifted bodily out of his chair, and thrown upon the floor.  So quickly was it done that he had no time to resist or to cry out.  Before he could realize what had happened, he found himself lying flat on his back, and felt a heavy weight upon his breast holding him down.

Filled with surprise and indignation, he looked up into the face that was bending over him, and recognized Pierre Costello, whose features wore a fiendish expression, the effect of which was heightened by a murderous-looking knife which he carried between his teeth.  Scowling fiercely, as if he were trying to strike terror to the boy’s heart by his very appearance, he loosened his grasp on Frank’s throat, and the latter, after coughing and swallowing to overcome the effects of the choking he had received, demanded: 

“What do you mean, you villain?”

Pierre, without making any reply, coolly proceeded to overhaul the contents of Frank’s pockets.  Like all boys of his age, our hero was supplied with a variety of articles, which, however serviceable they may be to a youngster of sixteen, no one else could possibly find use for, and the Ranchero’s investigations brought to light a fish-line, bait-box, a rooster’s spur, of which Frank intended to make a charger for his rifle, a piece of buckskin, half a dozen bullets, a brass cannon, a pocket comb, a quill pop-gun, a small compass, a silver ring, a match-box, a jack-knife, and a piece of lead.  These articles he tossed upon the floor, rather contemptuously, and then turned all Frank’s pockets inside out, but failed to discover any thing more.