"Why, Joice," said Roger, calling to me as I passed by with the others, "why, my dear"--we had grown up boy and girl together--"this is, indeed, a sorry sight. Oh! Mr. Kinchella, could you not put a bullet in their brains or a knife to their throats ere you let Joice and your sweetheart be captured and brought here." "Hush! Hush!" I said to him, pausing on my way, as we all did, our guards making no resistance. "Hush! Indeed, I think we are in no such great danger. Anuza, the chief, who stormed my house, has found out that their great medicine man, who was undoubtedly the instigator of the attack upon us all, is none other than that horrid villain, Roderick St. Amande." "Roderick St. Amande!" the others, including the backwoodsmen, exclaimed, "Roderick St. Amande. Nay, 'tis impossible." "Indeed, indeed 'tis true. We of our party have all seen him and spoken with him; nay, heard him gloat over all the horrors of the attack and threaten us with what awaits us here. But, but--the chief heard him too, and also heard Mary denounce him, and, I think, he meditates worse against him than any of us because he hath deceived them so." "Is your chief powerful enough to do thus?" Bertram Pringle asked. "Ours, our captor, is, we have heard, the head of the whole tribe and the greatest friend of their medicine man. Suppose he believes not what your conqueror tells him?" "Then," said Buck, "we will give him some proofs that shall make him believe. I can do any trick Mr. Roderick St. Amande can, either with cards, palming, or what not, and if they place faith in him for any of his hanky-panky, hocus-pocus passes, why, they'll fall down and worship me! I wasn't the conjurer at many a booth for nothing before I took to more elevating pursuits." And now the lads asked us how we had parted from that other one of whom I thought hourly and only--though they knew it not!--and when I told them how I had left him wounded and bleeding their sorrow was great. But they said that, if the Indians did not proceed to any violence towards us, a rescue must be attempted before long, since every other hamlet and town would know by now what had befallen us of Pomfret, and doubtless an expedition would soon set out to seek for us.