The old squaw started nimbly forward, and poor Mary pressed her little naked babe closer to her breast, on seeing the towering form of Ossong, streaked with his ghastly war paint, appear between her and the door of the wretched wigwam in which she lay so helplessly at his mercy. "What seek _you_ in the dwelling of Orono?" demanded the Indian woman with some asperity. "Neither the squaw nor the papoose of the white man," replied Ossong, scornfully. "It is well. You are in your native land, and can find the bones of your fathers; but here the poor squaw of the white chief is a stranger." "And Orono will protect her," added the other savage, who bore that name, stepping proudly forward. "The pawaws say our fathers come from the rising sun, and that we must go towards the place of its setting---that _there_ is the future home of the Red man," said Ossong, as a savage glare lit up his eyes and he played with his scalping-knife; "shall even one pale face be permitted to live, if such things are said? Go--Orono has become a woman!" With this taunt, the most bitter that can be made to an Indian, Ossong waved his hand, and strode away with a sombre air of fury and disdain. As he left the hut, a glittering ornament which hung at his neck caught the eye of Mary. She uttered a faint cry, for she was weak and feeble, and while clutching her babe in one arm, strove to raise her attenuated form with the other. She endeavoured to call back Ossong; but her voice failed, and she sank despairingly on her bed of skins. Among the gewgaws which covered the broad breast of Ossong, to her horror, she had discovered the gilt regimental gorget of her husband, which she knew too well, by its silver thistle, as there had been no other officer of Highlanders but be in Fort William Henry. The eyes of Orono gleamed brightly; he, too, had detected the cause of her agitation, and he said, "It is an ornament of the pale chief, worn by Ossong." "It was my husband's! Oh, Orono, ask him--for pity, ask him, where, when, how he obtained possession of it." "Ossong is fierce as a Pequot," said the Iroquois, sadly. "Ask him, lest I die!" exclaimed Mary, passionately. "Ossong in a strong and fierce warrior," replied the savage, gently; "I will steal it for you, if I can. Ossong is cruel. Listen; he found a pale face on the shore of the Horican; he was wounded and feeble, so Ossong stripped and bound him to a gum-tree, where he roasted him with sedge-grass, and, before death, forced him to eat his own ears, which were cut off by a scalping-knife." "Oh, my husband!" exclaimed Mary, in despair; "and a fiend such as this has had his hands on you!" "I fear me," said Orono, shaking his head, "that he you weep for has gone to where the sun hides itself at night." "What mean you, Orono?" "Away beyond the great prairies of the buffaloes--to the place of sleep--the wigwam of grass, where the Indian sleeps sounder than even the fire-water of the white man can make him."