"Ask him, lest I die!" exclaimed Mary, passionately.
"Ossong in a strong and fierce warrior," replied the savage, gently; "I will steal it for you, if I can. Ossong is cruel. Listen; he found a pale face on the shore of the Horican; he was wounded and feeble, so Ossong stripped and bound him to a gum-tree, where he roasted him with sedge-grass, and, before death, forced him to eat his own ears, which were cut off by a scalping-knife."
"Oh, my husband!" exclaimed Mary, in despair; "and a fiend such as this has had his hands on you!"
"I fear me," said Orono, shaking his head, "that he you weep for has gone to where the sun hides itself at night."
"What mean you, Orono?"
"Away beyond the great prairies of the buffaloes—to the place of sleep—the wigwam of grass, where the Indian sleeps sounder than even the fire-water of the white man can make him."
"Alas! you mean the grave?"
The Iroquois nodded his head, and relapsed into silence, while with a low moan at a suggestion which seemed to fulfil her own fears, and seemed only too probable, Mary fell back and became, to all appearance, insensible.
Several days passed, during which she hovered between time and eternity; but nothing, even in civilized life, could surpass the watchful kindness and attention of the poor but grateful savage on whose mercy she found herself thrown. How Ossong became possessed of the regimental gorget—whether he had found it in the wood, or torn it from her husband's neck when dead, Orono could never discover, as his tawny compatriot was animated in no measured degree by the worst attributes of the American Indian—craft, timidity, fickleness, ferocity, revenge, and quickness of apprehension. Hence there were no means of wresting the important—perhaps dreadful—secret from him. He was soon after shot in a skirmish by the soldiers of Fort Edward, and the story of the gilded badge perished with him.
"Oh, never to see my dear, dear husband again—never, in this dreary world! It is a terrible blow—a dreadful and soul-crushing conviction!" Mary continued to exclaim, "God has required many sacrifices of me; but that Roderick should never see the wee pet-lamb I have brought into this vale of woe is the bitterest thought of all; and to what a fate shall I leave it! My heart is like a stone—my brain a chaos."