They went at once, as in obedience to a summons, which must be answered then or never. They went as led by a hand, which, to resist, were to tempt their own destruction. They saw themselves drawing--felt themselves drawn toward that side of the hill where, not a stone's throw in the rear of the fort, it abruptly ended in the lofty precipice, before mentioned. A few steps more and their feet had been on the very verge, when, between it and themselves, rang out a cry of thrilling horror, followed by peals of wild, unearthly laughter, which, beginning at the brow of the steep, swiftly descended along its sides, till in the edge of the forest, afar down there, they subsided into a wild, unearthly wail. Then in a moment all was still--not a tell-tale echo awaking to help the listening ear to determine what manner of sounds had broken the silence. Harrowed with horror and anguish, Jervis and Elster stood, and with no more power to move from the spot than the senseless stones that lay around them. Not a sign of life had they seen, where sounds of life they had heard. It was as if the vacant air had cried; then laughed, to mock itself for crying; then wailed, to chide itself for laughing. Old Pow-wow had followed cowering behind them. Now he bounded forward, and straight came bounding back again, with something in his mouth, which he laid at their feet. Pitiful heavens! The little coonskin cap! The next instant the dog had flung him sheer over the brink of the steep, and now, in a succession of huge leaps from ledge to ledge, was making his zig-zag way adown its sides, till, in the forest shadows far below, he disappeared. One moment more and his bark came ringing joyfully up to his friends--the sweetest, welcomest sound that had ever greeted their ears. "Pow-wow has found him! Wait here, Elster!" So saying, and moved by a will, not all his own, and sustained by a power, no more his own than had he been a child in his father's arms, the father followed the dog, making his way in the same zig-zag manner adown the perilous hill, till, in the dusky shadows at its base, he, too, had plunged. A few long, rapid strides, and he was at the spot whence Pow-wow's joyful barks had continued to resound. What found he there? The body, indeed, of his child; but whether as a waif unto life, or as a prize unto death--it were hard to tell. Stretched out on the ground, all ghastly it lay; the head toward him, and just beyond the naked feet--adjusted side by side, with their old air of easy self-assurance, the Manitou moccasins. As the father approached, the elfish little horrors, fetching a summerset aloft, as he had seen them do the time before, plumped themselves directly between him and his child, though vanishing the moment they touched the ground. But, with the vanishing, came a voice of more than mortal tenderness, and with the voice a perfume of more than earthly sweetness. "Jervis Whitney--