“Harkee, brother, since you will call me brother; though, Heaven be praised, not a drop of nigger or Injin blood runs in my veins,” resumed the corporal.  “Harkee, friend redskin, answer me one thing.  Did you ever hear of such a man as Mad Anthony?  He was the tickler for your infernal tribes!  You pulled no saplings together for him.  He put you up with ‘the long-knives and leather-stockings,’ and you outrun his fleetest horses.  I was with him, and saw more naked backs than naked faces among your people, that day.  Your Great Bear got a rap on his nose that sent him to his village yelping like a cur.”

Again was the corporal compelled to stop to take breath.  The allusion to Wayne, and his defeat of the Indians, excited so much ire, that several hands grasped knives and tomahawks, and one arrow was actually drawn nearly to the head; but the frown of Bear’s Meat prevented any outbreak, or actual violence.  It wa’s deemed prudent, however, to put an end to this scene, lest the straightforward corporal, who laid it on heavily, and who had so much to say about Indian defeats, might actually succeed in touching some festering wound that would bring him to his death at once.  It was, accordingly, determined to proceed with the torture of the saplings without further delay.

The corporal was removed accordingly, and placed between the two bended trees, which were kept together by withes around their tops.  An arm of the captive was bound tightly at the wrist to the top of each tree, so that his limbs were to act as the only tie between the saplings, as soon as the withes should be cut.  The Indians now worked in silence, and the matter was getting to be much too serious for the corporal to indulge in any more words.  The cold sweat returned, and many an anxious glance was cast by the veteran on the fell preparations.  Still he maintained appearances, and when all was ready, not a man there was aware of the agony of dread which prevailed in the breast of the victim.  It was not death that he feared as much as suffering.  A few minutes, the corporal well knew, would make the pain intolerable, while he saw no hope of putting a speedy end to his existence.  A man might live hours in such a situation.  Then it was that the teachings of childhood were revived in the bosom of this hardened man, and he remembered the Being that died for him, in common with the rest of the human race, on the tree.  The seeming similarity of his own execution struck his imagination, and brought a tardy but faint recollection of those lessons that had lost most of their efficacy in the wickedness and impiety of camps.  His soul struggled for relief in that direction, but the present scene was too absorbing to admit of its lifting itself so far above his humanity.

“Warrior of the pale-faces,” said Bough of the Oak, “we are going to cut the withe.  You will then be where a brave man will want all his courage.  If you are firm, we will do you honor; if you faint and screech, our young men will laugh at you.  This is the way with Injins.  They honor braves; they point the finger at cowards.”