Let me drop the curtain over this portion of the tale. Well, this particular cottage or hut, being on the confines of the country, had not been visited by the queen's fearsome soldiers. But even had they come they would have found that Weenah was far away in the woods, for her father Shooks-gee loved her much. But one evening there came up out of the dark pinewood forest, that lay to the north, a great band of wandering natives.
They were all armed and under the command of one of her majesty's most bloodthirsty and daring chiefs.
Hand to claw this man had fought pumas and jaguars, and slain them, armed only with his two-edged knife.
This savage Rob Roy M'Gregor despised both bow-and-arrow and sling. Only at close quarters would he fight with man or beast, and although he bore the scars and slashes of many a fearful encounter, he had always come off victorious.
Six feet four inches in height was this war-Indian if an inch, and his dress was a picturesque costume of skins with the tails attached. A huge mat of hair, his own, with emu's feathers drooping therefrom, was his only head-gear, but round his neck he wore a chain of polished pebbles, with heavy gold rings, in many of which rubies and diamonds sparkled and shone.
But, ghastly to relate, between each pebble and between the rings of gold and precious stones, was threaded a tanned human ear. More than twenty of these were there.
They had been cut from the heads of white men whom this chief--Kaloomah was his name--had slain, and the rings had been torn from their dead fingers.
This was the band then that had arrived as the sun was going down at the hut of Shooks-gee, and this was their chief.
The latter demanded food for his men, and Shooks-gee, with his trembling wife--Weenah was hidden--made haste to obey, and a great fire was lit out of doors, and flesh of the llama hung over it to roast.
But the strangest thing was this. Seated on a hardy little mule was a sad but beautiful girl--white she was, and unmistakably English. Her eyes were very large and wistful, and she looked at Kaloomah and his band in evident fear and dread, starting and shrinking from the chief whenever he came near her or spoke.