The silence and darkness together were doubly painful to Roland, who had marked the streak of dawn, and longed with fierce impatience for the moment when he should be again freed from his bonds, and left to attempt some of those desperate expedients which he had been planning all the night long. In such a frame of mind, even the accidental falling of a half-consumed brand upon the embers, and its sudden kindling into flame, were circumstances of an agreeable nature; and the ruddy glare thrown over the boughs above his head was welcomed as the return of a friend, bringing with it hope, and even a share of his long lost tranquillity. But tranquillity was not fated to dwell long in his bosom. At that very moment, and while the blaze of the brand was brightest, his ears were stunned by an explosion bursting like a thunderbolt at his very head, but whether coming from earth or air, from the hands of Heaven or the firelock of a human being, he knew not; and immediately after there sprang a huge dark shadow over his body, and there was heard the crash as of an axe falling upon the flesh of the young Indian who slept on his right side. A dismal shriek, the utterance of agony and terror, rose from the barbarian's lips; and then came the sound of his footsteps, as he darted, with a cry still wilder, into the forest, pursued by the sound of other steps; and then all again was silent,--all save groans, and the rustling in the grass of limbs convulsed in the death-throe at the soldier's side. Astounded, bewildered, and even horror-struck, by these incomprehensible events, the work of but an instant, and all unseen by Roland, who, from his position, could look only upwards towards the boughs and skies, he would have thought himself in a dream, but for the agonised struggles of the young Indian at his side, which he could plainly feel as well as hear: until by and by they subsided, as if in sudden death. Was it a rescue? was that shot fired by a friend? that axe wielded by a human auxiliary? those sounds of feet dying away in the distance, were they the steps of a deliverer? The thought was ecstacy, and he shouted aloud, "Return, friend, and loose me! return!"