“I am sure my joy is very great, too.  Oh! how my dear mother and sister must have agonized over this calamity.”

“They probably have known nothing of it.”

“But you say you saw the light of the fire, and you were fully as far off as they.”

“It is true, but I had not the remotest suspicion of its being your home.  It seems unlikely that your mother should have suspected the truth, as she had every reason to believe the Indians were friendly to your family.”

“They must have seen the illumination in the sky, and, knowing the location of our home so well, they could but have their worst apprehensions aroused.”

“If such indeed be the case, let us congratulate ourselves that we are so soon to undeceive them.”

“I am glad that father cannot possibly hear of this until he is assured of our safety.”

“I am not so sure of that.  When I left, the chances were that he might follow me almost immediately on a visit to the block-house at the settlement, and from what I heard I am pretty certain that if he has not already been, he soon will be appointed to the command of the garrison at that place.  It is not at all impossible that he may be in charge of it this very minute.”

“We will reach there to-morrow, when, as you said, their anxiety will be relieved, although it will be no trifling loss to father when he finds his house and all his possessions destroyed by the savages.”

“But, as nothing when weighed in the balance with his loved child.”

“And then the poor servants!  Oh! what an awful sight to see them tomahawked when praying for mercy.”

“And, I am told, by their only survivor, Cato there, that none implored so earnestly for them as did you yourself, never once asking for your own life, which was in such peril.”

“I thought that I might accomplish something for them, but it was useless.  Cato only escaped, and it was Providence, alone, that saved him.”

“What ye ‘scussin’ ob my name for?” called out the negro, who had caught a word or two of the last remark.

“Stop noise,” commanded Oonomoo, peremptorily.

“Hebens, golly! ain’t dem two talkin’, and can’t I frow in an obserwashun once in a while, eh?”

“Dey love—­talk sweet—­you nigger and don’t love!”

“Oh, dat’s de difference, am it?  Well, den, I forefwif proceeds all for to cease making remarks.  But before ceasing altogever, I will obsarve that you are a pretty smart feller, Oonymoo, and I hain’t see’d de Shawnee Injine yet dat knows as much as your big toe.  Hencefofe I doesn’t say noffin more;” and the negro held strict silence for a considerable time.

Lieutenant Canfield and Miss Prescott conversed an hour or so longer, in tones so low that they were but a mere murmur to the Huron, and then as the forest grew more tangled and gloomy, their words became fewer in number, until the conversation gradually ceased altogether.