He bade me rise, even assisting me to do so, and motioned to one of the braves to wheel up another couch on which to seat myself, and all the time he muttered to himself, "A slave! a slave! a drunkard! a cheat!" and his eyes glistened fiercely. But at last he rose to his feet again, and said with the calm that distinguished all his actions: "The time has come to set forth to the mountains---" "No, no!" Mary and I shrieked together, "No! no! Spare us, oh! spare us. Nay, rather slay us here on the spot than let us fall into his hands." "If," he replied, looking down imperturbably upon us, "you have spoken truth, as from his own manner I deem it to be, no woman will ever fall into his hands again. If he has deceived us as you have said, no punishment he promised for the prisoners of Pomfret will equal that which he himself will endure. I have spoken." "And our dear ones," I said, "what, what shall become of them? Oh! do not tear us from those we love," while, even as I spoke, I flung myself on Gerald's body and kissed his lips and wept over him. "Those who are alive must journey with us into the forests and towards the mountains--those who are gone to their fathers we war not with. This one," he said, stooping over Gerald, "this one, who was you say to have been your mate, is not dead, but--he will die." Again I shrieked at his words, though as I did so I saw so strange a look in the chief's eye that the shriek died upon my lips. It was a look I could not understand. "He will die," he went on, "he will die. Yet he was a brave man; of all white men in this house none last night fought more fiercely. And this other," turning to the body of O'Rourke, "he too still lives, and he too will die. Let him lie here." His glance rested next on Mr. Kinchella, and, in the same soft impassive voice--the voice in which there was no variance of tone--he said, "You are unharmed?" "Yes," the other replied, "I am unharmed." "And you," exclaimed the Bear, striding to where all the others stood bound, "you, too, have escaped our weapons; the great War God has spared you?" "Ay, noble chief," exclaimed Buck, as though addressing a comrade, "the great War God, as you call him, generally does spare Peter Buck. I was born to good luck, and, noble chief, being so spared I'm going to give you a few revelations about your great medicine man who's just gone out." "Silence," exclaimed Anuza, "not now; not now. But come, the day has arrived. We must go forth." Then turning to me he said, "Take your last farewell of him you love." Oh! how I kissed my darling again and again, how I whispered in his ears my love for him in those sad moments of parting, while Mary knelt by my side and comforted me and Mr. Kinchella stood by gazing down on to Gerald's white face. To think that I should have to leave him lying thus, to think that this was our parting when our love was but so newly told!