Two parallel lines had already been formed, running the longest way of the meadow and far down into an opening of the forest, and all were armed with switches or sticks, some of the latter so heavy, that, wielded by a strong hand, they would knock a man senseless. No sympathy, no kindliness showed in the faces of any of these people. The spirit of the ball and the dance was gone. The white youth was their enemy, he had chosen to remain so, and they knew no law but an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Children and women were as eager as men for the sport. It was a part of their teaching and belief.
Henry looked again down the line, and there he saw the renegades, three on one side and three on the other. It seemed to him that theirs were the most cruel faces of all. He saw Braxton Wyatt swinging a heavy stick, and he resolved that it should never touch him. He could bear a blow from an Indian, but not from Braxton Wyatt.
Then he looked from the cruel face of the renegade to the forest, so green, so fresh, and so beautiful. What a glorious place it was and how he longed to be there. The deep masses of green leaves, solid in the distance, waved gently in the wind. Over this great green wilderness bent the brilliant blue sky, golden at the dome from the high sun. It was but a fleeting glance, and his eyes came back to earth, to the Wyandots, and to his fate.
"I was able to make it the gantlet first," Timmendiquas was saying in his ear. "Others wished to begin at once with the fire."
"Thank you, White Lightning," said Henry.
He looked for the third time at the line, and he saw that no human being, no matter how great his strength and dexterity, could reach the end of it. It was at least a quarter of a mile in length, and long before he was half way he would be beaten to the earth, limbs broken. They had not intended that he should have the remotest chance of escape. Nor, look as he would, could he see any.
Hark! What was that? It was a sound from the forest, a low, sweet note, but clear and penetrating, the wind among the leaves, the voice, almost human, that told him to be of good faith, that even yet in the face of imminent death he would escape. It was no longer an ordinary wind blowing through the wilderness; it was some voice out of space, speaking to him. White Lightning saw the face of his prisoner suddenly illumined, and he wondered.
Henry looked down the line for the fourth time, and then the way came to him. He knew what to do, and he drew himself together, a compact mass of muscles, and tense like steel wire. Then, while the clear song from the forest still sang in his ear, he glanced up once more at the beneficent heavens, and uttered his wordless prayer:
"O Lord, Thou who art the God of the white man and the Manitou of the red man, give me this day a strength such as I have never known before! Give me an eye quick to see and a hand ready to do! I would live. I love life, but it is not for myself alone that I ask the gift! There are others who need me, and I would go to them! Now, O Lord, abide with me!"
They were his thoughts, not his words, but he was the child of religious parents, who had given him a religious training, and in the crisis he remembered.