By this time the allied English and Indian armies were all astir, and the disorderly retreat began afresh, Tecumseh keeping his Indian brigade half a mile in the rear of the regulars. Toward the middle of the afternoon the party that had the white prisoners in keeping, having gradually fallen behind the line of march, abruptly turned into the mouth of a dingle which, deep and shadowy, opened gloomily into the valley of the Thames. Here, for the first time since morning, our luckless hunters spied Black Thunder, where a little farther within the dingle, as if there in waiting for them, he was vehemently, though not loudly, haranguing some fifteen or twenty of his warriors who, clustered in a close red knot before him, were taking in with ravenous ears his every word. Evidently the evil, foreboded by Burl in the morning, was in some shape near at hand, for a fierce gesture flung toward them from time to time by the speaker, with the vengeful glances of his listeners in the same direction, told but too plainly the drift of the harangue. At length, as if to make the surer of their savage sympathies and give the climax to his barbarous appeal, Black Thunder suddenly threw back his robe and disclosed to view two scars--a deep and ugly one in the arm, a long and ghastly one athwart the breast. Whereat uprose a chorus of yells expressive not so much of savage sympathy as of savage delight. The moment after, seized foot, with brush-wood to feed the devouring flames heaped up against him to his shoulders, there stood Big Black Burl, a victim doomed to the fiery tortures of the death-stake. Helpless himself, Captain Reynolds could not choose but stand where he was and become a witness of the harrowing spectacle--too harrowing for any Christian eye to behold, even were the victim but the poor dumb brute, who has only his howlings to tell of his agony; but that his affectionate, faithful, brave old Burl should ever have come to a fate so terrible, wrung his heart with unshakable anguish--anguish the keener, when he reflected that this had never been but for that very heroism which, on a beautiful summer morning in the days long gone, had wrought deliverance to him, a forlorn little captive, and restored him to the love of a lone and widowed mother. O that ever this should be! And the strong man wept, as wept had he never till that sad day.