University of Virginia Library

2. CHAPTER II.

The family of Logan, “The Mingo Chief,” is now
extinct. The sun of their glory hath set in darkness.
I myself have seen the last of that valiant race, the
very last, descending majestically to the chambers of
death.

Who has not heard of Logan? Who cannot recount
the deeds of his generation?

Let us go together to the dwelling place of his spirit,
and travel over the wild-blossoming earth that the
children of Logan have trodden: bathe where they

have bathed, in the cold blue water of the wilderness,
and go a hunting with their shadows, in the dim breathless
solitude.

In one of the lower counties of Virginia, (one of the
United States of North America,) there once lived—
no matter when—it is not material to my story —a legitimate
descendant of Logan, the great Indian Warrior.

Logan had been `the friend of white men.' Who
does not remember it? Suddenly, without provocation,
or notice, this Indian patriarch, this Indian prince, in
the very prime and vigour of his maturity, while about
him sat his children and his children's children, and
through ten thousand ruddy channels, the blood of the
brave and good was rippling from the fountain of his being—in
one moment, one little moment, he was smitten
with barrenness and death. The shot rang, and many
generations mingled their blood at his feet.

All his hopes were prostrate. He was childless!
He was no longer a father nor a husband. But a moment
before, he had been the husband of many wives,
and the father of a multitude. Now!—he was alone,
alone in the wide world. The channels of immortality
were cut asunder—its sources and fountains locked up
and hidden—and the rich fluid of many hearts was
turned aside to the unfruitful sand of the desert.

`There is not one drop of my blood,' said Logan,
`now running in the veins of a single human creature!'
What desolation!

`I would not turn on my heel,' said he, `to save my
life.' Who does not believe him?

`I took up the hatchet,' said Logan, `I was glutted
with vengeance.' Verily he was glutted, and his
son, and his son's sons have been glutted after him.

Again Logan was a father. In wrath was his child
begotten—in desperation, and in power. He was nourished
with the blood of white men. From his very infancy,
even while he was lashed to the tree-branch,
and swung by the tempestuous wind, the scalp of
many an enemy blackened and dried within his reach,
and often were his little fingers reddened by the

trophies torn, by the hand of his father, from the dying
white man, and flung, yet fresh and reeking, into
the basket that contained the boy. Logan's was the
disposition and appetite of the parent vulture, that
perches above her young and flaps over them, while
their clotted beaks are searching into their first banquet
of blood and flesh.

He made his boy a warrior. He was born a chief.
That done, the old man called a council of his nation,
pronounced an awful malediction upon the whites, and
disappeared forever.

Such things have happened before. I know it. Lycurgus
did much the same; but Logan had never heard
of Lycurgus. The passing away of Numa too, was misterious
and terrible; but of Numa, and even of Rome,
`the commonwealth of kings.' Logan had never heard.
No!—the feeling of Logan was that of the priesthood
to his religion. He journeyed to the wilderness, to hold
communion with the Great Spirit. He abandoned
his tribe, why? Because the sinews of his youth were
rigid; and the bow of his strength, no other man might
bend.

I have seen that bow, nay, I have it; I can lay my
hand upon it this moment, by putting out my arm: but
none of this generation can draw the arrow to the head.
But Logan—he went, alone as I said, to the wilderness.
He devoted himself, with the solemnity of one
about to meet in convocation, the builders of his race;
about to hearken to their denunciations upon him and
his, in full and shadowy council assembled, for permiting
the white men to profane their quiet and boundless
heritage; and then!—to hear his pardon pronounced in
the deep solitude, as with the voice of congregated
kings, while he recounted the deeds that he had wrought
in his old age, in battle and in blood, against the white
man. He knelt—he laid down his child at the foot
of an oak, that instant shattered and riven with the
midnight thunderbolt, and prayed that the cloud might
not pass over his head, unless it were to confirm his
destiny, and render the hands of the babe that had
dabbled in blood, yet more and more familiar with it

as they waxed older and stronger. His prayer was
heard. There was a dark commotion in the turbid
blue sky, as of a host hurrying away, appeased and
conciliated, by some tremendous rite.

In one word, Logan abandoned his dominion, that
his dominion might not abandon him. He left it—terrible
as the sway of an evil spirit, that his son might be
made to tread in his footsteps, while the fire of his
heart was newly kindled; while the blood of his being
was in its fiercest agitation; while his youthful ears were
yet ringing with the curses of his father upon the encroaching
white settler; and while his young spirit
stood shivering, and appalled, at the mysterious disappearance
of that fierce and implacable father.

Thus much for two generations of Logan. The blood
of this race was afterwards mingled with that of their
white neighbours, and produced, in their remote descendants,
a family neither Indian nor white; neither
savage nor civilized. I knew them. The last time that
I was in my country, I paid them a visit, and they all
assembled to meet me—for—and why should I conceal
it? I, myself, am of the same blood. There was in
the males, the erect port, the lofty, reserved carriage,
and the sullen, glistening, snaky black eye of the
Indian; but the swarthy and deep, in tinctured hue of
the native American had yielded to the hearty brown
of the sturdy white settler; the strong and adventurous
woodman. And in the females, there was little to betray
their high origin, except their jetty black hair, and
their exceedingly straight limbs, for their complexion
was the warm, bright, voluptuous olive, of the young
Spanish girl. In both, however, I have seen the blood
reddening in the forehead; and the underlip quivering
with emotion, in a manner that was never seen, never!
in the unadulterated, undegenerate Indian. His face is
bronze; his feelings, and the fountain thereof, undiscoverable;
his nature inaccessible—its surface like that
of frozen waters, unshaken alike by the tempestuous
visitation of outward things; and revealing nought of
the inward and perpetual agitation of their secret, and
mysterious depths—forever placid—forever motionless!

Passion only can move the Indian—and his motion
then, is that of Death, which he breathes upon the heart
of man, and it dissolves in silence. But then, then, wo
to every living creature that crosses his path. His
muscles are cracking with tension; a preternatural
strength rushes from his heart, through all his struggling
extremities; and he becomes, while, in appearance, as
immoveable as the dark sculptured marble before you,
literally and truly, a Devil!

This family, the mother of which was the nearest
blood descendant of the great Logan; and her supremacy
was acknowledged with the deepest veneration, by
all the neighbouring tribes, lived at this time in a little
cabin, close by a clear and beautiful stream, a branch
of the Shannandoah, which many years before had been
turned out of its natural course, and dammed up by the
beavers, so as almost to enclose the few acres of bright
tufted green earth, on the very margin of which, the
little Indian habitation nestled and cowered. It was not
the English cottage, overrun with shining honeysuckle
and vivid foliage; nor the Irish cabin, with bare walls,
and floor of trodden earth; and still less was it the
fantastic thatch-covered dwelling of the novelist, where
brown bread and milk, cleanly scoured tables, and coarse
napkins, and sheets `white as the driven snow,' are
forever set out to the imagination. No! but it was far
more picturesque than either. It was humble, and at a
distance might have been taken for a green hillock,
overrun with wild, flowering luxuriance, and shadowed,
and fanned like a fountain, by the glittering birch
and the waving branches of many a young tree that
leant over it: on its walls of broken rock, through every
crevice and cranny of which, bright transparent
flowers, and tendrils, and vines were creeping, you would
discover the implements of war—the tomahawk, the
rifle, the bow and arrow—the fishing tackle, net and
white bone hooks, game drying in the sun, the antlers
of many a slain deer, the bear and panther skins, and
the light airy canoe, all leaning, or lying about, or
swinging in the wind, without order or design. In one
word it was an Indian cottage; and looked like the

natural growth of the wilderness, or the hermitage of
some half spiritual creature, loving quiet and idleness,
and shunning all the bustle and activity of the world.
It was a green solitude, populous with life and beauty,
only at the heart:—unapproachable to every evil thing,
like some enchanted spot, surrounded by running
water.[1]

The mother of this family—how shall I describe her?
She was an Indian queen, so stately, so natural, so
magnificent! Clad in her flowing panther skin, with her
quiver ringing at her shoulder; her feet sandalled; and
resting upon her tall bow, she stood the express image
of wild sovereignty, very beautiful, and full of power
and grace. Her countenance was melancholy and serious;
there was even something tender and touching in
it, at times, as she turned her fine eyes towards her
naked children, that lay basking about in the sunshine,
and feathering their arrows, or sharpening their fish
bones, and flints. The traces of high thought were visible
upon her lofty forehead, and an occasional shadow
passing over it, attended with a slight trembling, or a
convulsive pressure of the lip, showed that her heart
was labouring with deep emotion, at times. It was
true—the spirit of the majestic woman was in perpetual
travail for her people.

The father—I feel my heart growing warm again, as
I recall the dear, dear spot to my remembrance, and if
I do not soon take my eyes from the picture that is, at
this instant, assembling itself before me, limb by limb,
and feature by feature, I shall grow sick at heart,
weary of my appointed trial, and throw aside my pen
forever, fainting in very wretchedness of spirit. But
there is a cure for this—the father!—at his name I revive;
my faculties arouse themselves. Let us talk of
the father then; of him that never forgot nor forgave.
What a sublime constancy! I will imitate him—I!—well
then `the father.' He was a savage and untractable

man, related, I remember to have heard in my youth, to
a noble family in his native land; one, who, having run
and rioted through every excess of indulgence, had, at
last, turned his back forever upon the old world, and
embarked for America—How did he this? With what
spirit? Not, I am sure, with that of the young adventurer,
braving death and terror in their very hiding
places, the chambers of the ocean—Seeing cities under
the wave, and diamonds studding the brown cliffs that
he is approaching—no, oh no!—nothing of this: but with
the cold, deadly, unforgiving misanthrophy of one, who,
leaving all on earth that should bind him to it, turns in
mockery of them that weep and shiver, as their heartstrings
are tugged at, and shakes off the dust from his
feet in scornful testimony against them,—snapping
asunder every tie of sympathy and affection—every filament
of brotherhood or love—every chord of judgment,
habit or feeling—bruising with an iron hand, and
breaking, as in derision, with profaning levity, the
youngest and greenest tendrils of the heart, alike with
the sinuous and gnarled roots of our toughest and most
protracted habitudes—trampling on them all!—scorning
them all!—scattering them all, without shame, or remorse,
yea, without emotion!

Such was the father; a savage before he left the palaces
of white men. But he was a great savage. He
had a desperate but sublime ambition. He was full of
the fiery element, that rises in the arteries like mercury
in a thermometer, at the approach of greatness. His
whole nature was heroick—but it was the nature of him
who thundered against the battlements of heaven. He
came to the colonies in company with white men, solely
because he could not man and navigate a ship over the
broad Atlantic, with his own individual and solitary
spirit. But the first moment he landed, the first moment
that he touched the shores of the Western world, he
adjured them all; he turned upon them, convulsively,
and cursed them all in the bitterness of his heart—his
name, and family, and kindred and country, nay, his
very religion did he curse, for that he cried, even that
was a religion of blood. He disappeared. For years it

was thought that he had perished, and he was almost
forgotten; yet men would start at the mention of his
name, and look hastily about them, before they ventured
to repeat any of the innumerable and terrifick stories
that were told of him.

I heard them once—from savages—I was a boy then
—but I never shall forget my awful admiration of the
father, or the silent yearning of my heart towards the
mother of this family. We were related—distantly, it
is true, but so related, that our proximity could be seen
in our very tread, and heard in our lowest whisper.
Yes! there was never a descendant of Logan, no matter
how his frame was distorted, his disposition perverted,
or his blood diluted by relationship to the whites, that
would not have been recognized and hailed as of that
family, by the least sagacious of the tribe, even after
many generations.

But what became of this family? What! they were
slaughtered—butchered, and profaned. Their end was
mysterious. At midnight a traveller had reposed with
them, eaten of their bread, and drunk of their cup—and
his comrades, who followed upon his track before the
next sun had risen, found the Indian cottage blazing
and crackling—the walls demolished—the trees falling
to ashes—and the skeletons of many hewed and bound
and broken human creatures—some very little—and
yet retaining the expression of agony, in their locked
and rivetted limbs, slowly consuming in the fervent heat.
Who were the murderers? It was never known—no
mortal lip hath ever named them—but there was one,
one even on this earth, whom they were never to escape;
one who pursued them, sleeping and waking, by
night and by day, with fire and sword, till his preternatural
sagacity and wrath, were satisfied. And then
—what became of him? He went mad—mad! and
roamed for whole years through the impenetrable solitude,
in quest of his beloved and her little ones.

But let us leave this picture. My heart fails me; I
cannot go on. Let me recur awhile to a manuscript of
my own, and content myself with copying the incidents
that are there related, with some of the reflections that

grew out of them, while they were fresh and active in
my remembrance, until I am more composed. The continuity
of my narrative shall not be broken. It is a necessary
part of the same `Family History.'

`One day, while the middle colonies were agitated
to distraction by the increasing inroads and massacres
of the warlike and exasperated Indians; when every
thing (it was said) had been attempted that human wisdom
could suggest, to conciliate them; and just at the
time when the existence of a formidable and threatening
confederacy, between all the most powerful tribes
in America, was becoming, every day, more and more
probable; when every hour was bringing to light, and concentrating
the scattered proof, that something tremendous
was in contemplation—inscrutable and inevitable—
some unimaginable but overwhelming evil—maturing in
the portentous tranquillity of many nations, who, from
being hereditary and mortal foes, were now holding their
midnight councils in the deepest and most unfathomable
recesses of the country—in the lone cavern—on
the high mountain top—by the shores of a cold lake;
while all was consternation and dismay, from uncertainty
concerning the manner and time of the mysterious
calamity, that seemed thickening about them; when
council after council had been summoned and dismissed,
by the white settlers, without coming to any satisfactory
determination; while the uninterrupted and
useless expenditure of warlike stores, at all times dangerous
to the whites, had been unwisely augmented, in
the hope of buying the forbearance of the Indians, till
the blindest and weakest were shuddering at the consequences
of their pusillanimity and shortsightedness;
while the savages grew every day more familiar with
the timidity and disorder of the whites; carefully evading
all interrogations, and baffling all conjecture, by
their sullen, shrewd and obstinate silence, and nothing
seemed left to the scattered and trembling colonists,
but to muster themselves, every man of them, capable
of wielding a tomahawk, for a war of extermination;
to concentrate their power, leave their fire-sides undefended
for a time, and hunt their wily and terrible

enemy back to his most secret hiding places——
just at this time—it was midnight—another council
board had just been dimissed—there stood, without
being announced, without preparation, before the governour
of the colony—in his very presence chamber too,
a man of gigantic stature, in the garb of an Indian.

The governour was leaning his face upon his hands—
his thin gray locks were blowing about his fingers, in
the strong night wind, from an open window that looked
towards the town. That he was in some profound
and agitating inquiry with himself, inwardly, could be
seen, by the movement of the swollen veins upon his
forehead, distended and throbbing visibly under the
pressure of his aged fingers. The whole picture was a
noble one; it would have made the heart of such a being
as Michael Angelo himself, swell, to have studied
the head of the old man:—The capacity and amplitude
of the brow—the scattered and beautiful white, thin
locks of threaded silver; the trembling hands; the occasional
movement of a troubled expression, almost articulate,
over the established serenity of the forehead
—all so venerable, placid, and awful, as in the confirmed
discipline and habit of many years, and all yielding
now, to the convulsive encroachment of emotion. Reader,
didst thou never see an old man—a good and great
one—weep? Then have thy feelings, thy heart and soul,
nay, thy very religion, escaped their severest trial.

The stranger contemplated the picture in silence.
He was greatly wrought upon by the aged presence,
and felt, perhaps, somewhat as the profaning Gaul did,
when he saw, what he took to be the Gods of Rome,
her old men, sitting immoveably in their chairs.

The governour, at length, like one who is determined,
resolved, and impatient for action, lifted his head,
smote the table heavily with his arm, and was rising
from his seat—why that pause!—He gasps for breath
—can it be—can the proportions, the mere outline of
humanity so disturb a man, an aged man too, a good
one, familiar, for half a century with danger and death?

He fell back upon his chair, and locked his hands
upon his heart, as if, for it grew audible in its hollow
palpitations—as if, to stifle its irregularity forever—if

he could, even though he himself were suffocated in the
effort, rather than betray the unmanly infirmity—a disobedient
pulse. He gazed steadily upon the being before
him, but with an expression of doubt and horror,
like that with which the prophet dwelt upon the sheeted
Samuel, as doubting the evidence of his own eyes,
yet daring not to withdraw them, though the cold icy
sweat started from the very ends of his fingers, lest
something yet more terrible might appear.

The Indian stood before him like an apparition. His
attitude (it is worth describing—for it was very peculiar)
was not entirely natural, nor perhaps entirely unstudied.
He stood motionless and apalling; the bleak,
barren, and iron aspect of a man, from head to foot
strong and sinewed with desperation, and hardened in
the blood and sweat of calamity and trial. He stood
with somewhat of high and princely carriage—like
the fighting gladiator—but more erect and less threatening
—more prepared and collected. Indeed it was
the gladiator still—but the gladiator in defence, rather
than attack.

The governour was brave, but who would not have
quaked at such a moment? To awake, no matter how,
when the faculties, or the body and limbs are asleep,
in a dim light—alone—helpless—and to find a man at
your side—an Indian!—it would shake the nerves, ay,
and the constitution too, of the bravest man that ever
buckled a sword upon his thigh.

“Great God!' articulated the governour at last—in the
voice of one suffocating and gasping—`Great God!—
what art thou?—Speak!'

No answer was returned—no motion of head or hand.

The governour's terror increased, but it was evidently
of a different kind now, the first shock of surprise having
passed—`Speak!' he added in a tone of command
—`Speak! How were you admitted? and for what?'

A scornful writhing of the lip; a sullen, deadly and
inward smile, as in derision, when the bitterness of the
heart rises and is tasted, was the prelude to his answer
—a pause—the Indian was agitated—but the agitation
passed off like the vibration of molten iron when it

trembles for the last time before it becomes solid forever.
Then he smiled!

That was his answer, that! The old man grew delirious
on the spot—he raved and tore his hair. In the
name of Heaven, what shook his frame so suddenly?

And the Indian—look at him! hear him!—breathing
out, at long intervals, like a hot and smoking war-horse,
—his eyes rooted, flaming and motionless—the old man
shivering from head to foot; rage, indignation, horror,
and madness in his countenance, and feebleness in his
frame—his spirit rebuking the weakness of his body,
and a preternatural voice struggling in his chest.

`Hell and furies! who are you!—what are you!—
whence are you?—what your purpose? Speak!—would
you murder me?—Murder me, if you will! but speak!—
Speak!—in mercy, speak to me!'—were the rapidly uttered
words of the governour, as he gradually relapsed.
He covered his face with his hands, and groaned aloud.
Surely the fear of death, surely that could not so work
upon him—`Speak! he resumed again, raising his head,
and uttering his voice in a transport of delirious agony
—`Oh George! speak to me, I pray thee—how came
thee here?—art thou George of Salisbury or not?—
who gave thee admittance?”

The Indian slowly unwrapped his blanket, and then
as slowly, in barbarous dalliance with the terrors of the
palsied old man, extended a bayonet towards him, reeking
with blood.

The governour was silent. It was a fearful moment.
His paroxysm appeared to abate at his will now—and
by his manner it would appear that some master-thought
had suddenly risen in its dominion, and bound hand
and foot all the rebellious and warring passions of his
nature. Did he hope for succour? or did he look, by
gaining time to some indefinite advantage by negociation?
It would be difficult to tell. But however it
might be, his deportment became more worthy of him,
more lofty, collected, imposing, and determined. Such
is the office of extreme peril. In desperate emergencies,
our souls grow calm, and a power is given to them
to gaze, as dying men will sometimes, upon the shoreless

void before them, with preternatural composure.
Here was an enemy, and one, of all enemies the most
terrible, dripping with recent slaughter, and so situated
that he could not escape, but by dipping his hands anew
in blood.

The governour dared not to call out, and dreaded, as
the signal of his own death, the sound of any approaching
footstep. To get there, where he was, the Indian
must have come, willing and prepared for, and expecting
certain death; of what avail then, the whole force of the
government household?

He attempted to prepare himself to pray; but he
could not. He but shook and trembled the more, as
he became more and more sensible of the necessity
there was, that, to prepare himself, he should be calm
and assured. The hot sweat rolled from his forehead
like rain. For a moment he would seem to give up entirely;
and then he would address his silent and awful
visitor with a feeble voice, almost of supplication—
soothingly and mildly, till the words would rattle and
die away in his chest, and then!—maddening with the
cause of his imbecility, in silence and dread, he would
lock his withered hands, raise them to heaven, and call
down curses upon the collossal Indian, with all the
violence and passion of intemperate boyhood—his voice
would grow fainter and fainter; he would become almost
inarticulate, and the sounds would die away at
last in a denouncing malediction, that seemed to freeze
his own blood as he breathed it.

Who would not have maddened? To be a governour
—a commander in chief, with the whole disposable force
of a large colony at one's bidding; and yet, to be living
and breathing only at the mercy of a single Indian! It
was indeed too much for human patience! He could
have driven a dagger through his own heart for relief.

There was a sword near the governour; he recollected
having unbuckled it, and thrown it aside, as he came
in from exercising a troop of horse, but a few hours
before the council had assembled. `It was in a chair
behind me,' thought he, and `perhaps, is there yet'—
But how should he discover whether it was or not?

He dares not shift his eye for a single instant from the
Indian. But, might he not amuse him for a moment,
and grope for it, without being perceived? How bravely
the old man's spirit mounted in the endeavour!

He made the search: but his implacable foe, like one
that delights in toying and trifling with, and mocking
his victim, permitted the eager and trembling hand but
to touch the hilt, not to grasp it—that were not so prudent,
in the wrath of a desperate man, a soldier, and a
veteran. The moment therefore, that the searching
fingers approached the hilt, the blanket fell from the
shoulders of the Indian, and the bloody bayonet gleamed
suddenly athwart the ceiling and flashed in the governour's
eyes. The hand was withdrawn, as if smitten
with electricity, from the distant sword; all defence
and hope forgotten, and the old man locked his thin
hands upon his bosom, bowed his head to the expected
sacrifice, and fell upon his knees.

The countenance of the Indian could not be seen, but
his solid proportions, like a block of shadow, could be
distinguished in the uncertain light of the distant and
dying lamps, suspended from the ceiling—a bold, great
outline and sublime bearing, the more awful for their
indistinctness; the more appalling as they resembled
those of a colossal shadow only. Like Sampson himself,
he stood, when about to heave the temple, and
pluck down the whole power of the Philistines upon
his own head; accumulating his wrath, husbanding and
concentrating his might, and preparing his shoulders,
for their last, last burden of shame and oppression.

At this instant, a red light flashed across the court
yard, and streaming through the open window, touched
the countenance of the Indian, and passed off like
the reflection of crimson drapery, suddenly illuminated
by lightening; voices were heard in a distant building,
and iron hoofs rattled over the broad flag stones of the
far gate way. A few brief words were interchanged
and a shot was fired;—the Indian's hand was upon the
bayonet again,—but the sounds passed away with the
same ceremony; and the prostrate governour, who had

kept an anxious eye upon the heavy doors of the hall,
inwardly expecting, yet scarcely daring to pray for an
approaching step, was beginning to yield anew to his
terrible fate—when another step was heard, and a hand
was laid upon the lock. The rattling of military accoutrements
was heard, as the guard stepped aside and
gave a countersign to some one approaching; and then,
a brief and stern echo, in the tone of unqualified authority
rang along the vaulted stair case, and the word
pass! was heard.

Yes, yes! a hand was now upon the lock! The light
in the apartment streamed fitfully up for a moment,
and flared in the breeze from the window, so as to fill
the whole room with shifting shadows.

The Indian motioned impatiently with his hand toward
the door, and the governour, while his heart sank
within him, arose on his feet and prepared to repel
the intruder, whoever he might be—but he could not
speak—his voice had gone—

The door was yielding to the hurried attempts of
some one fumbling about for the lock:—and voices,
in distant and clamorous dispute, were heard approaching.

The governour tried again—`Begone!—begone!—for
God's sake!' he cried, mingling the tone of habitual
command with that of entreaty—and then, recovering
himself, with a feeling of shame, he added, in his most
natural and assured manner, `begone, whoever you
are, begone!'

The noise ceased. The hand was withdrawn; and
step by step, with the solid and prompt tread of a strong
man, a soldier, in his youth, and accustomed to obedience,
the intruder was heard descending.

There was another long, long silence, which each
seemed unwilling to interrupt, while each numbered
the departing footfalls. The chamber grew dark. It
was impossible longer to distinguish the objects in the
room. A low conference was held between the two.
Tones of angry remonstrance, horror—threats—defiance—suppressed
anguish—and then all was silent
again as the house of death.

The governour spoke again—in a whisper at first, and
then louder—a slight motion was heard near him—and
he raised his voice. In vain, and the mysterious and
death like silence, he found more insupportable than
all that he had yet endured. Where was his foe at
that instant?—how employed?—ready perhaps, to
strike the bayonet through and through his heart, at the
very next breath! He could not endure it—no mortal
could—he uttered a loud cry, and fell upon his face in
convulsions.