incurred.  Summoning all his strength, he now made the most desperate efforts to reach his friends.  The lake was little more than knee deep from the shore to the bar, but, encumbered as he was, the difficulty opposed to his movements was immeasurably against him, and yet he seemed generously resolved rather to perish than relinquish his charge.  Already were his pursuers, now closely followed by a numerous band, within twenty yards of him, when the two young men, each armed with a cutlass and pistol, sprang from the boat upon the sand bar:  as the Indians came on they fired deliberately at them, but both missed their aim.  Encouraged by this failure, the fearless devils dashed eagerly on, brandishing their gleaming tomahawks, but littering not a sound.  Already was the unfortunate Baynton within a few feet of the bar, when he felt that the savages were immediately upon him.

“Take, take, for God’s sake take her!” he cried, as with a desperate effort he threw the light form of the still unconscious girl into the arms of one of the young men.  “My strength is quite exhausted, and I can do no more.”

For the first time a yell burst from the lips of the pursuing savages, as they saw him, to whom the guardianship of the wretched Clara was now confided, suddenly spring from the sand bar into the lake, and in a few rapid strokes gain the side of the boat.  Leaving the hapless Baynton to be disposed of by his companion, the foremost darted upon the bank, burning with disappointment, and resolved to immolate another victim.  For a moment he balanced his tomahawk, and then, with the rapidity of thought, darted it at the covered head of the youth who still lingered on the bar.  A well-timed movement of the latter averted the blow, and the whizzing steel passed harmlessly on.  A gutteral “Ugh!” marked the disappointment of the Indian, now reduced to his scalping-knife; but before he could determine whether to advance or to retreat, his opponent had darted upon him, and, with a single blow from his cutlass, cleft his skull nearly asunder.  The next instantaneous purpose of the victor was to advance to the rescue of the exhausted Baynton; but, when he turned to look for him, he saw the mangled form of what had once been that gallant and handsome officer floating, without life or motion, on the blood-stained surface of the Huron, while his fiendish murderer, calmly awaiting the approach of his companions, held up the reeking scalp, in triumph, to the view of the still yelling groups within the block-house.

“Noble, generous, self-devoted fellow!” exclaimed the youth, as he fixed his burning tearless eye for a moment on the unfortunate victim; “even you, then, are not spared to tell the horrid story of this butchery; yet is the fate of the fallen far, far more enviable than that of those who have survived this day.”  He then committed his cutlass to its sheath; and, leaping into the deep water that lay beyond the bar, was, in a few seconds, once more in the stern of the boat.