It was on a bright and beautiful morning—for mysterious nature often smiles on the darkest deeds of her children—that a group of Indians were assembled around the council-fire in one of the extensive forest ranges of Virginia. Their faces painted in the most grotesque and hideous manner, the fierceness of their looks, and the savageness of their dress, would alone have inspired awe in the breast of a spectator. But on the present occasion, the fatal business in which they were engaged imparted even more than usual wildness to their appearance and vehemence to their manner. Bound to a neighbouring tree so tightly as to produce the most acute pain to the poor creature, was an aged negro, who seemed to be the object of the vehement eloquence of his savage captors. Although confinement, torture, and despair had effected a fearful change, by tracing the lines of great suffering on his countenance, yet it would not have been difficult even then to recognize in the poor trembling wretch our old negro friend at Windsor Hall. After discovering the deception that had been practised on them by Mamalis, and punishing the selfish ambition of Manteo, by expelling him from their tribe, the Indian warriors returned to Windsor Hall, and finding the family had escaped, seized upon old Giles as the victim on whom to wreak their vengeance. With the savage cruelty of their race, his tormentors had doomed him, not to sudden death, which would have been welcome to the miserable wretch, but to a slow and lingering torture. It would be too painful to dwell long upon the nature of the tortures thus inflicted upon their victims. With all their coarseness and rudeness of manner and life, the Indians had arrived at a refinement and skill in cruelty which the persecutors of the reformers in Europe might envy, but to which they had never attained. Among these, tearing the nails from the hands and feet, knocking out the teeth with a club, lacerating the flesh with rough, dull muscle and oyster-shells, inserting sharp splinters into the wounded flesh, and then firing them until the unhappy being is gradually roasted to death—these were among the tortures more frequently inflicted. From the threats and preparations of his captors, old Giles had reason to apprehend that the worst of these tortures he would soon be called upon to endure. There is, thank God, a period, when the burdens of this life become so grievous, that the prayer of the fabled faggot-binder may rise sincerely on the lips, and when death would indeed be a welcome friend—when it is even soothing to reflect that, “We bear our heavy burdens but a journey, Till death unloads us.”