The appearance of this man was prepossessing in the highest degree, displaying as it did every requisite of mind and body that can ennoble and dignify manly beauty. He stood at the summit of his prime, his form erect and symmetrical, though somewhat stouter than is usually to be found in men of his race. His bearing was graceful, lofty, and commanding; his eye eagle-like in its unflinching brightness; his face, in its European regularity of feature and clearness of outline, eminently handsome, showing in its lines the energy and intelligence of a great mind, true to itself and to the best impulses of human nature. He was dressed in the peculiar and picturesque costume of his people, made magnificent by fineness of material and the richness of decoration. Besides the usual Indian weapons, all of polished steel and silver-mounted, he wore a handsomely hilted English broad-sword, though less as an ornament than as a badge of rank, or mark of distinction. Word having reached him that Black Thunder and his party had fallen behind the line of march, and to what bloody-minded intent their whoops and yells, heard in that direction, plainly enough attested, the chief, prompt to the call of humanity, had galloped back, as just described, to arrest and rebuke a proceeding so inhuman and so unwarrior-like. His rebuke ended, he turned to take a look at the prisoner whom he had rescued from the flames, but of whom he had as yet seen nothing, the smoke at the moment of his coming up still hovering heavily over the death-pile. The Big Black Brave with a Bushy Head still stood bound to the tree, yet without the mark or even the smell of fire upon his person, excepting a slight singeing of his fleecy locks and bear-skin cap, not to mention a smart watering at the eyes, the effect of the smoke. Ah--smoke! I find that I have unwittingly made an important omission, for which I owe you an apology, kind and sympathetic reader. I should have told you that a heavy shower of rain had fallen but a few hours before the kindling of the death-pile, which, as needs must, had left the brush-wood in better condition for heavy smoking than for lively combustion. Had I mentioned this circumstance in its proper place, I should have spared your tender sensibilities somewhat by giving you something contingent to catch at as suggestive of possible intervention. But to return.