It was impossible to make the Sachem understand the real state of the case; with that blind obstinacy characteristic of his race, he would listen to nothing; the more they tried to prove to him that he was wrong, the more convinced he felt he was right. At a late hour of the night the Canadian and Black-deer withdrew, accompanied, as far as the entrenchments, by the Captain. So soon as they had gone, James Watt returned thoughtfully to the tower; on the threshold he stumbled against a rather large object, and stooped down to see what it was. "Oh!" he exclaimed as he rose again, "then they really mean fighting! By Heaven! They shall have it to their heart's content!" The object against which the Captain had stumbled was a bundle of arrows fastened by a serpent skin; the two ends of this skin and the points of the arrows were blood stained. Black-deer, on retiring, had let the declaration of war fall behind him. All hope of peace had vanished, and preparation for fighting must be made. After the first moment of stupor the Captain regained his coolness; and although day had not yet broken, he aroused the colonists and assembled them in front of the town, to hold a council and consult as to the means for neutralizing the peril that menaced them. CHAPTER IX. THE SNAKE PAWNEES. We will now clear up a few points in this story which may appear obscure to the reader. The Redskins, however great their other faults may be, have a fanatic love for the country where they are born, and nothing can take its place. Monkey-face did not speak falsely when he told Captain Watt that he was one of the principal Chiefs of his tribe; but he had been careful not to reveal for what reason he had been expelled from his tribe. This reason the time has now arrived for us to make known. Monkey-face was not only a man of unbridled ambition, but also, an extraordinary thing for an Indian, he had no religious faith, and was completely exempt from those weaknesses and that superstitious credulity to which his fellows are so amenable: in addition, he was faithless, dishonourable, and of more than depraved manners. Having been taken, when young, to the towns of the American Union, he had been in a position to see closely the eccentric civilization of the United States. Unable to comprehend the good and bad sides of this civilization, and steer between them, he had, as generally happens in such cases, been seduced by that which most flattered his tastes and instincts, and had only taken from the customs of the whites whatever completed and furnished his precocious depravity. Hence, when he returned to his tribe, his language and manners were so discordant with what was done and said around him, that he speedily excited the contempt and hatred of his countrymen. His most violent enemies were naturally the priests, or, at least, the sorcerers, whom he had tried several times to turn into ridicule.