“This grows more and more difficult to bear, June,” Mabel said, when she left the window.  “I could even prefer to see the enemy than to look any longer on this fearful array of the dead.”

“Hush!  Here they come.  June thought hear a cry like a warrior’s shout when he take a scalp.”

“What mean you?  There is no more butchery! —­ there can be no more.”

“Saltwater!” exclaimed June, laughing, as she stood peeping through a loophole.

“My dear uncle!  Thank God! he then lives!  Oh, June, June, you will not let them harm him?”

“June, poor squaw.  What warrior t’ink of what she say?  Arrowhead bring him here.”

By this time Mabel was at a loop; and, sure enough, there were Cap and the Quartermaster in the hands of the Indians, eight or ten of whom were conducting them to the foot of the block, for, by this capture, the enemy now well knew that there could be no man in the building.  Mabel scarcely breathed until the whole party stood ranged directly before the door, when she was rejoiced to see that the French officer was among them.  A low conversation followed, in which both the white leader and Arrowhead spoke earnestly to their captives, when the Quartermaster called out to her in a voice loud enough to be heard.

“Pretty Mabel!  Pretty Mabel!” said he; “Look out of one of the loopholes, and pity our condition.  We are threatened with instant death unless you open the door to the conquerors.  Relent, then or we’ll no’ be wearing our scalps half an hour from this blessed moment.”

Mabel thought there were mockery and levity in this appeal, and its manner rather fortified than weakened her resolution to hold the place as long as possible.

“Speak to me, uncle,” said she, with her mouth at a loop, “and tell me what I ought to do.”

“Thank God! thank God!” ejaculated Cap; “the sound of your sweet voice, Magnet, lightens my heart of a heavy load, for I feared you had shared the fate of poor Jennie.  My breast has felt the last four-and-twenty hours as if a ton of kentledge had been stowed in it.  You ask me what you ought to do, child, and I do not know how to advise you, though you are my own sister’s daughter!  The most I can say just now, my poor girl, is most heartily to curse the day you or I ever saw this bit of fresh water.”

“But, uncle, is your life in danger —­ do you think I ought to open the door?”

“A round turn and two half-hitches make a fast belay; and I would counsel no one who is out of the hands of these devils to unbar or unfasten anything in order to fall into them.  As to the Quartermaster and myself, we are both elderly men, and not of much account to mankind in general, as honest Pathfinder would say; and it can make no great odds to him whether he balances the purser’s books this year or the next; and as for myself, why, if I were on the seaboard, I should know what to do, but up here, in this watery wilderness, I can only say, that if I were behind that bit of a bulwark, it would take a good deal of Indian logic to rouse me out of it.”