The doctor and Olive were standing a little apart, her beautiful eyes streaming with tears, and his face convulsed with anguish.
"You love this squaw," continued the chief, "and if you do not want to see her tortured, tell us how you managed to escape."
"I have nothing to tell more than I have already done," he replied. "Oh Olive, Olive!"
"Then let the squaw be prepared for death!"
In an instant she was surrounded by knives—walled in so that the slightest movement would bring her soft, fair flesh against some sharp point. Her lover trembled like one with the ague, then nerved himself with a mighty effort, and returning the defiant looks around him, answered:
"Is it well, great Medicine, that I should tell to other ears than your own the secrets that are whispered by the dead?"
"The pale-face is a dog," commenced the old man, but before he could finish the sentence, a voice was heard coming from the wigwam in which the prisoner had been confined, forbidding that any thing should be told.
Then it was the Medicine's turn to tremble. He looked at the prisoner—at the wigwam—at the sky—at the earth; listened to the waving of the trees and the low whistling of the wind through the branches. But as the voice was not repeated, he, after a time, gathered courage and said:
"It is nothing. Unless the pale-face confesses, let the torture of the squaw go on."
"Oh, heaven!" shrieked the girl, "do you love me and condemn me to this when a single word would save me?"