"How can you prove it?" they demanded, while Anuza himself stood motionless, his eyes fixed on his rival. "My brethren and followers, you speak either like children who know nothing or old men who have forgotten what once they knew. Anuza has told me that I lie. To him I say the same thing. He lies. He lies out of his spite and envy of me. And have you, oh! ye children or dotards, forgotten how, when one of our race thinks thus of another, they decide who is the truthful man and who the liar?" "We have not forgotten," they all exclaimed; "we have not forgotten. It must be by the death of one or the other. Both cannot live." "It is well," Senamee exclaimed, "it is well. And of Anuza, the rebel, and of me your chief, one of us must die by the hand of the other. As that death is dealt out so shall it be decided what the fate of this one is," pointing to the impostor shivering by his side. "If I defeat the Bear he shall not suffer, for then it will be known that Anuza is the liar and has wrongly accused him; if Anuza slays me then must you do with the medicine chief as is his will. But," descending from his seat and advancing towards where that warrior stood, "that he will kill me I do not fear. Those of the house of Senamee dread not those of the race of the crawling Bear." And then, advancing ever nearer unto Anuza until he stood close in front of him, he made a defiant gesture before him and exclaimed: "Anuza, the time has come." While Anuza, returning his glance with equally contemptuous ones, replied: "You have spoken well, Senamee. The time has come." PART III THE NARRATIVE OF LORD ST. AMANDE CONTINUED CHAPTER XXV THE SHAWNEE TRAIL He who has been stunned by a heavy blow comes to but slowly, and so it was with me and slowly also my understanding and my memory returned, while gradually my dazed senses began to comprehend the meaning of all around me. I remembered at last why the handsome saloon in which my beloved one, my sweet Joice, took ever such pride, should now resemble the deck of a ship after a fierce sea fight more than a gentlewoman's withdrawing-room. It dawned upon me minute by minute why the harpsichord and spinet should both be shattered, the bright carpet drenched and stained with blood, the window-frame windowless, with, by it, a heap of dead, formed of red and white men and the mastiffs, and why my own white silk waistcoat and steinkirk should be stained with the same fluid. Nor was I, ere long, astonished to see the fontange which Miss Mills had worn lying on the spinet, nor to perceive O'Rourke seated by a table near me eating some bread and meat slowly and in a ruminative manner, while he washed the food down with a beaker of rum and water and shook his head sadly and meditatively all the while. And so, in a moment, there came back to me all that happened but a little time before, as I thought, and with a great shout I called to him and asked him where my dear one was.