Toward noon the next day the hunters, who had gone out in pursuit of the savages, weary and sad returned to the fort. After parting with Burl, they had not ascended more than a mile into the hills, when the larger trail made its reaeppearance on the banks of the more easterly of the two forks, whose united waters formed the little river which turned the mill of the settlement. Rejoining their parties, they had renewed the chase with spirit, the trail now leading in a direct line toward the Ohio, whose banks they had reached at sunset, and just in time to send a volley of bullets after the fugitives, who, however, before the pursuers were up with them, had regained their canoes and put a broad stretch of the river between themselves and the perilous shore. The hunters had had a clear view of the Indians as they landed on the opposite side, and having made sure that there were no white prisoners among them, they had given over the chase, convinced that the unfortunate Bushie must have been borne away in some other direction by the three Indians whose traces had been discovered at the corn-field fence, and lost sight of in the larger trail. One chance more, however, remained to them: Big Black Burl was still abroad, and so long as that faithful and courageous fellow kept the war-path, good reason had they for hoping that all yet might end well. The sun was nigh his setting; a few more far-reaching winks of his great bright eye and he would be sinking behind the evening hills of green Kentucky, and rising above the morning hills of China. Already had the horses and cattle--as was the custom of the times when Indians were known to be across the border--been brought for the night within the shelter of the fort. Already the ponderous wooden gate was swinging creakingly to on its ponderous wooden hinges; but just as its ponderous wooden bolt was sliding into the ponderous wooden staple, out from the neighboring forest ringing, with echo on echo, it came--the old familiar cry, the trumpet-call to battle abroad, the note of brotherly cheer at home: "I yi, you dogs!"--too jocund and triumphant for any one whose ears had caught the glad sound to doubt that glad tidings were coming. Straightway reopening the gate and looking forth, the hunters spied, moving toward them through the bushes in the edge of the woods, first the plumed crest of an Indian warrior, then a more spreading display of bright feathers, so high aloft that one could fancy they topped the head of a giant full eight feet high, who came treading close behind. For a few moments this was all that could be seen; till now, full over the ragged skirts of the forest, there in open view, they came--the young Indian in front, with his load of rifles laid across his arm; then Big Black Burl, bristling all over with hatchets and knives; and lastly, with a consequential twist of the tail and with the plumed scalp-lock of an Indian waving over his neck, the invincible Grumbo bringing up the rear.