“Yer can, eh? Waal, what if I don’t mind to kill you? Perhaps Slocum sees he can make more by toting you into camp. It ain’t every day a British officer is caught and I mout get promotion. Kurnel Slocum would sound well. Come now, hadn’t yer better sign a little order on your father’s agents for a neat little sum, payable to Major Slocum for vally received? Yer wound hurts, don’t it?” enquired Major Slocum with a grin, as he thrust the toe of his boot into it. Involuntarily, Morton gave a stifled shriek of pain and lay gasping, while his tormentor looked down upon him with a smile, enjoying his sufferings. As Morton’s eyes rolled in agony, the sight of Hemlock met their gaze. He was stealing stealthily up behind Slocum, who stood all unconscious of his danger, torturing his victim in the hope he would purchase his release. Nearer the Indian came; his arms now opened out,--he stood behind Slocum,--they closed,--he was in their grasp, and was thrown with a heavy thud on the ground, when, Hemlock bound his arms and legs with his sash. Then, with dreadful calmness, he drew his scalping-knife and knelt, one knee on the breast of the prostrate man. “Many times you have escaped me, Slocum, but you die now. The oki granted what I asked; the spell is gone. I tracked you long, but now you are mine. I will not kill you at once. You shall die by inches, and have a taste, before the dark cloud swallows you, of the bitterness I have drank at your hands for years.” So saying, with infernal ingenuity, the heritage of his tribe in the art of torture, he stripped Slocum of his clothing and proceeded to draw cuts with his knife on different parts of the body, nowhere making an incision any deeper than requisite to cause the quivering flesh to feel the full pain. The wretched man plied the Indian with all manner of promises to induce him to desist, and on seeing he was relentless in his purpose, was about to shriek in the hope of attracting aid, when Hemlock caught him by the throat, and snatching up handfuls of forest-litter forced them into his mouth. Then he resumed his dreadful task. Morton, who had alternated from a state of semi-stupor to that of insensibility, looked on in his lucid intervals with sickened horror, and begged Hemlock to desist. He paid not the slightest heed but went on for hours, gloating over the agonies of his victim, and adding a fresh wound as the others dulled. Alert even in his dreadful employment, a rustle in the bush caught his ear, and he listened. “It is the Yankee picket going to the blockhouse. If Hemlock could take you with him he would, but you cannot travel. They will make you prisoner and care for your wound. And now Hemlock must finish his revenge.” With one swift sweep of the knife, he cut the throat of his now fainting victim, with another he severed his scalp, and flourishing it above his head, vanished in the woods. Immediately afterwards a body of blue