On reaching the summit of a hill, on which Quito had often halted when returning from his frequent hunting expeditions, to gaze in satisfaction at his village in the far distance, and think of Laughing-eye, a shade of deep and unmistakeable anxiety crossed his grave features, and instead of halting, as he was wont to do, he hastened onwards at redoubled speed, for his eye missed the wreaths of smoke that at other times had curled up above the trees, and one or two of the wigwams which used to be visible from that point of view were gone. The terrible anxiety that filled Quito’s breast was in a short time changed into fierce despair, when he suddenly turned round the base of a cliff, behind which his village lay, and beheld his late home a mass of blackened ruins. Little circles of grey ashes indicated where the tents had been, and all over the ground were scattered charred bones and masses of putrefying flesh, which told of ruthless murder. Savage nature is not like civilized. No sound or word escaped the desolate Indian, who now knew that he was the last of his race, but the heaving bosom, the clenched teeth, and compressed lips, the fierce glittering eye, and the darkly frowning brows, told of a deadly struggle of anguish and wrath within. While Quito was still gazing at the dreadful scene, he observed something move among the bushes near him and darted towards it. It proved to be an old woman, who was blind and scarcely able to make herself understood. She was evidently famishing from hunger, so Quito’s first care was to give her a little of the dried meat which formed his store of provisions. After she had devoured some of it, and drunk greedily of the water which he fetched from a neighbouring stream in a cup of birch bark, she told him that the camp had been suddenly attacked, some days before, by a war-party of enemies, who had slain all the men and old women, and carried the young women away into captivity—among them Laughing-eye.