The worthy lady seemed disposed to run on in this way for some time longer, had not a significant sign from her husband stopped her mouth. The chief, without vouchsafing her the smallest attention, unfastened the pelisse of grey fox skin, stripped it off, and then proceeded to divest the infant of the first of the coats in which it was enveloped, like a silkworm in its cocoon. But when, after having with some difficulty accomplished this, a third, fourth, and fifth wrapper appeared, he seemed suddenly to lose patience, and drawing his knife, he, with one cut, ripped the whole of the child's clothes from its body, and handed it over stark naked to the tavern-keeper's wife. "Incarnate fiend!" screamed the shuddering woman, as she snatched the infant from his hands. "Stop!" cried the Indian, his cold and imperturbable gaze fixed upon the infant's neck, from which a small medal was suspended by a gold chain. Without uttering a word, the woman stripped the chain over the child's head, threw it into the face of the savage, and hurried to her bed. "The devil's in the woman!" muttered her husband, apparently not a little uneasy at her violence. "The red warrior," said the Indian, with immovable calm, "will pay with beaver skins for the milk that his little daughter drinks, but he will keep what he has found, and the door must open when he comes for the child." "That's all very well," said the tavern-keeper, to whom it suddenly appeared to occur that some farther explanation might not be altogether superfluous; "and I'll keep the child willingly enough, though, thank God, I've plenty of my own. But if the parents should come, or the white father hear of the child, what then? The red chief knows that his hand reaches far." The Indian remained for a while silent, and then replied in a significant tone-- "The child's mother will never come. The night is very dark, the storm howls in the forest--to-morrow nothing will be seen of the red men's footsteps. It is far to the wigwam of the white father. If he hears of the child, my white brother will have told him. It he takes it, then will the red chief take the scalps of his white brother's children." "Then take your child back again," said the backwoodsman, in a decided tone, "I'll have nought to do with it." The Indian drew his knife, upon which fresh blood-stains were visible, and cast an ominous glance towards the bed. "We will take care of it; no one shall hear of it!" screamed the horrorstruck woman. The Indian calmly replaced the knife in his girdle, and again spoke. "The throats of the red men are dry," said he.