The stolid indifference to all sublunary matters which had distinguished Nathan throughout the scene, vanished the moment he found himself alone.  In fact, the step of the savage the last to depart was yet rustling among the weeds at the Black-Vulture’s door, when, making a violent effort, he succeeded in placing himself in a sitting posture, and glared with eager look around the apartment, which was, as before, dimly lighted by a fire on the floor.  The piles of skins and domestic utensils were hanging about, as on the preceding night; and indeed, nothing seemed to have been disturbed, except the weapons, of which there had been so many when Edith occupied the den, but of which not a single one now remained.  Over the fire,—­the long tresses that depended from it swinging and fluttering in the currents of smoke and heated air,—­was the bundle of scalps, to which Braxley had so insidiously directed the gaze of Edith, and which was now one of the first objects that met Nathan’s eyes.

Having reconnoitered every corner and cranny, and convinced himself that there was no lurking savage watching his movements, he began straightway to test the strength of the thong by which his arms were bound; but without making the slightest impression on it.  The cord was strong, the knots were securely tied; and after five or six minutes of struggling in which he made the most prodigious efforts to tear it asunder, without hesitating at the anguish it caused him, he was obliged to give over his hopes, fain could he have, like Thomson’s demon in the net of the good Knight, enjoyed that consolation of despair,—­to

“Sit him felly down, and gnaw his bitter nail.”

He summoned his strength, and renewed his efforts again and again, but always without effect; and being at last persuaded of his inability to aid himself, and leaned back against a bundle of skins, to counsel with his own thoughts what hope, if any, yet remained.

At that instant, and while the unuttered misery of his spirit might have been read in his haggard and despairing eyes, a low whining sound, coming from a corner of the tent, but on the outside, with a rustling and scratching, as if some animal were struggling to burrow its way betwixt the skins and the earth, into the lodge, struck his ear.  He started, and he stared round with a wild but joyous look of recognition.

“Hist, hist!” he cried, or rather whispered, for his voice was not above his breath; “hist, hist!  If thee ever was wise, now do thee show it!”

The whining ceased, the scratching and rustling were heard a moment longer; and, then, rising from the skin wall, under which he had made his way, appeared—­no bulky demon, indeed, summoned by the conjuror to his assistance—­but little dog Peter, his trusty, sagacious, and hitherto inseparable friend, creeping with stealthy step, but eyes glistening with affection, towards the bound and helpless prisoner.