“And why should we?  It is enough if we can rescue the prisoner.”

“Friend, thee is mistaken.  If thee attacks the villains, and but one of them escapes alive to the village, sounding the alarm, thee will never enter the same in search of the maid, thee kinswoman.  Thee sees the case:  thee must choose between the captive there and thee cousin!”

This was a view of the case, and as Roland felt, a just one, well calculated to stagger his resolutions, if not entirely to abate his sympathy for the unknown sufferer.  As his hopes of success in the enterprise for which he had already dared and endured so much, evidently depended upon his ability to approach the Indian village without awakening suspicion, it was undeniable that an attack upon the party in the vale, unless resulting in its complete destruction, must cause, to be borne to the Black-Vulture’s town, and on the wings of the wind, the alarm of white men in the woods; and thus not only cut him off from it, but actually bring upon himself all the fighting men who might be remaining in the village.  To attack the party with the expectation of wholly destroying it, was, or seemed to be, an absurdity.  But to desert a wretched prisoner whom he had it perhaps in his power to rescue from captivity, and from a fate still more dreadful, was a dereliction of duty, of honour, of common humanity, of which he could scarce persuade himself to be guilty.  He cast his eyes up the glen, and once more looked upon the captive, who had sunk to the ground, as if from exhaustion, and whom the savages, after beating him awhile longer, as if to force him again on his feet, that they might still enjoy their amusement, now fell to securing with thongs.  As Roland looked, he remembered his own night of captivity, and hesitated no longer.  Turning to Nathan, who had been earnestly reading the struggles of his mind, as revealed in his face, he said, and with unfaltering resolution,—­“You say we can rescue that man.—­I was a prisoner, like him, bound too,—­a helpless, hopeless captive—­three Indians to guard me, and but one friend to look upon me; yet did not that friend abandon me to my fate.—­God will protect my poor cousin—­we must rescue him!”

“Thee is a man, every inch of thee!” said Nathan, with a look of uncommon satisfaction and fire:  “thee shall have thee will in the matter of these murdering Shawnee dogs; and, it may be, it will be none the worse for thee kinswoman.”

With that he motioned Roland to creep with him beyond the crest of the hill, where they straightway held a hurried consultation of war to determine upon the plan of proceedings in the prosecution of an adventure so wild and perilous.