But there was still a third prodigy to be wondered at.  The third prisoner was dragged from among the horses to the fire, where he was almost immediately recognised by half a dozen different warriors, as the redoubted and incorrigible horse-thief, Captain Stackpole.  The wonderful conjuror, and the wonderful young Long-knife, who was one moment a captive in the hands of Piankeshaws on the banks of the Wabash, and, the next, an invader of a Shawnee village in the valley of the Miami, were both forgotten:  the captain of horse-thieves was a much more wonderful person,—­or, at least, a much more important prize.  His name was howled aloud and in a moment became the theme of every tongue; and he was instantly surrounded by every man in the village,—­we may say, every woman and child, too, for the alarm had brought the whole village into the square; and the shrieks of triumph, the yells of unfeigned delight with which all welcomed a prisoner so renowned and so detested, produced an uproar ten times greater than that which gave the alarm.

It was indeed Stackpole, the zealous and unlucky slave of a mistress whom it was his fate to injure and wrong in every attempt he made to serve her; and who had brought himself and his associates to their present bonds by merely toiling on the present occasion too hard in her service.  It seems,—­for so he was used himself to tell the tale,—­that he entered the Indian pound with the resolution to fulfil Nathan’s instructions to the letter; and he accordingly selected four of the best animals of the herd, which he succeeded in haltering without difficulty or noise.  Had he paused here, he might have retreated with his prizes without fear of discovery.  But the excellence of the opportunity,—­the best he had ever had in his life,—­the excellence, too, of the horses, thirty or forty in number, “the primest and beautifullest critturs,” he averred, “what war ever seed in a hoss-pound,” with a notion which now suddenly beset his grateful brain, namely, that by carrying off the whole herd he could “make anngelliferous madam rich in the item of hoss-flesh,” proved too much for his philosophy and his judgment; and after holding a council of war in his own mind, he came to a resolution “to steal the lot.”

This being determined upon, he imitated the example of magnanimity lately set him by Nathan, stripped off and converted his venerable wrap-rascal into extemporary halters, and so made sure of half a dozen more of the best horses; with which, and the four first selected, not doubting that the remainder of the herd would readily follow at their heels, he crept from the fold, to make his way up the valley, and round among the hills, to the rendezvous.  But that was a direction in which, as he soon learned to his cost, neither the horses he had in hand, nor those that were to follow in freedom, had the slightest inclination to go; and there immediately ensued a struggle between the stealer and the stolen, which, in the space of a minute or less, resulted in the whole herd making a demonstration towards the centre of the village, whither they succeeded both in carrying themselves and the vainly resisting horse-thief, who was borne along on the backs of those he had haltered, like a land-bird on the bosom of a torrent, incapable alike of resisting or escaping the flood.