How much of this speech the chief really understood were hard to say; but having heard it, he turned, and for a few moments earnestly regarded the young Kentuckian where, in delighted surprise at the unlooked-for turn their ugly adventure had taken, he had stood the while, and now, with the liveliest interest, was awaiting the upshot. Then, as if comprehending fully the circumstances of the case, the chief ordered Black Thunder to restore both prisoners their arms and accouterments, and whatever else had been taken from them--a command sullenly but promptly obeyed. All being ready, their deliverer, speaking again in English, but this time addressing himself to the white man, said, "Follow me!" and, setting his face westward, led the captives from the spot. To avoid the risk he must run of falling in with the American scouts or pickets, their guide ascended at once into the upland forest, through whose shadows lay not only their most secret but shortest route. As they gained the summit of the steep overlooking the dingle where his death-pile had been kindled, the Fighting Nigger--the Preaching Nigger fast asleep within him--made a momentary pause. Waving his bear-skin war-cap loftily over his head, he sent down to Black Thunder, triumphantly and defiantly, his old war-cry, so often heard in the stormy days of long-ago in the land of the Dark and Bloody Ground, now filling those Canadian wilds with gigantic echoes which, flying affrightedly hither and thither, for full three minutes thereafter kept hill-top saying to hill-top, dingle to dingle, "I yi, you dogs!" Chapter XX. HOW KUMSHAKAH FIGURED IN THE LIGHT OF THE SETTING SUN. The red man foremost, the black man hindmost, and the white man between, silently, swiftly they wended their way through the mazes, green and brown, of the autumn-painted forest. "What manner of man is this," the young Kentuckian could not but say to himself, "at whose voice the fierce, unruly warriors of the wilderness stay their barbarous hands, from before the glance of whose eye their doughtiest champions quail, and under whose hand the captive goes forth again into life and freedom?"