to their feet, some weeping, others laughing in hysterical joy, and all embracing their children with frantic energy. Never were there more welcome guests than the score of weary men who refreshed themselves in the various houses of the settlement that night. Sentinels were placed, and each settler returned to his dwelling, accompanied by three or four guests; every heart beat high, save one--Martha Fellows; she, poor girl, was sad among the general rejoicing; her lover had not spoken to her though she lingered near his side in the crowd, and had once almost touched him. Instead of going directly to her father's house, as had been his custom, he accepted the Englishman's invitation, and departed to sleep in his dwelling. Now this same Englishman had a niece residing with him, who was considered by some to be more beautiful than Martha herself. The humble maiden thought of Jones, and of the bright blue eyes of the English girl, till her heart burned with the same jealous feelings she had so ridiculed in her lover. "I will see him! I will see them both!" she exclaimed, starting up from the settle where she had remained, full of jealous anxiety, since the dispersing of the crowd; and unheeded by her father, who was relating his hunting exploits to the five strangers quartered on him, she dashed away her tears, threw a shawl over her head, and taking a cup, as an excuse for borrowing something, left the house. The Englishman's dwelling stood on the outward verge of the clearing, just within the shadow of the forest. Martha had almost reached the entrance, when a dark form rushed from its covert in the brushwood, and rudely seizing her, darted back into the wilderness. The terrified girl uttered a fearful shriek; for the fierce eyes gazing down upon her, were those of a savage. She could not repeat the cry, for the wretch crushed her form to his naked chest with a grasp of iron, and winding his hand in her hair, was about to dash her to the ground. That moment a bullet whistled by her cheek. The Indian tightened his hold with spasmodic violence, staggered back, and fell to the ground, still girding her in his death-grasp; a moment he writhed in mortal agony--warm blood gushed over his victim--the heart under her struggled fiercely in its last throes; then the lifeless arms relaxed, and she lay fainting on a corpse. CHAPTER II. He lay upon the trampled ground, She knelt beside him there, While a crimson stream gush'd slowly 'Neath the parting of his hair. His head was on her bosom thrown-- She sobb'd his Christian name-- He smiled, for still he knew her, And strove to do the same.--FRANK LEE BENEDICT. "Oh, Arthur! dear Arthur, I am glad it was you that saved me," whispered Martha, about an hour after her rescue, as she lay on the settle in her father's house, with Arthur Jones bending anxiously over her. Jones dropped the hand he had been holding and turned away with troubled features.