For a single minute Mr. Brainerd was on the point of following in the footsteps of Fred, and making a break for freedom: that was at the height of the general confusion, when the majority of the Indians started in pursuit.  
Possibly such a prompt course might have succeeded, but he allowed the critical moment to pass, through fear that some additional cruelty would be visited on the heads of those whom he left behind.
 
When Aunt Peggy resumed her culinary operations, the sat down again on the log, excited and fearful that the events of the last few minutes would the crisis they had been for hours.
 
Habakkuk McEwen was alarmed, but he could do nothing more than give expressions to his sympathy for the victim of the old lady's , while he regretted, with an which cannot be described, his failure to get away with Fred Godfrey, who, as it seemed to the New Englander, was the born favorite of fortune.
 
"Thank God!" was the of Mr. Brainerd, as he compressed his lips, "Fred is beyond their reach."
 
"Are you sure of that?" asked Maggie.
 
"Sure of it!" repeated her parent, turning his gaze on her, while he smiled grimly. "Of course I am. When he escaped the clutches of Queen Esther to-day he had no darkness to help him, and the were at his heels. Yet he got away safely, and he never would have fallen into their hands again but for his anxiety to help us. Now he is out there somewhere in the woods, where it is as dark as Egypt, and do you suppose he is the fool to allow them to take him again? Not by a long shot."
 
Maggie was immeasurably relieved to hear these words of her parent, which, it may be said, removed every fear for her brother from her thoughts.
 
"But, father," she added, "what can he do, with his arms bound?"
 
"Faugh! what's that? We are tied with green withes or vines that hurt like the , but it will take only a few minutes to rub them against the corner of a stone or rock and separate them. Have no fears about Fred," continued her father, "these red skins can and yell, and howl and crack their heels together, but they'll never have another such a chance to scalp Fred Godfrey as they had a little while ago."
 
Relieved of this , Maggie's anxieties were centered upon her friends.
 
Her heart bled for her father, who sat as proudly upright and as though at the head of a brigade of men; but she could only pray and utter brave words, in the hope of cheering him.
 
Poor Eva was so terrified that she cried continually. She clung to her beloved parent, and, fortunately, as yet none of her captors made any objection. She was to stay by him to the last.
 
The American Indian admires bravery as much as does his enemy, and it needed no student of human nature to see that the few who remained were as much disgusted as amused with the sorry figure cut by their Tory leader in his affray with Aunt Peggy Carey.
 
This was proven by their refusal to , and by the grins that appeared among them when the comedy was going on. But they were under the leadership of the same Tory, and, when he came stumbling back from his fall over the log, and the lady resumed culinary operations, the Senecas became as owlishly as seems to be their nature.
 
They were helped in this feeling by the flight of Godfrey, the prisoner most prized. As it was, the entire party came near starting for the young man, but, unfortunately, they checked themselves in time to prevent a stampede on the part of the rest of the captives.
 
Jake Golcher, as we have said, came back dazed and pretty well . A great deal of his straggling hair had been removed by Aunt Peggy, and his gridironed by her vigorous finger-nails.
 
He dropped down in a condition at one end of the log, removed from the captives, who, like the Indians, looked at him askance, half disposed to laugh , despite the alarming danger.
 
In the mean time, Aunt Peggy was the slices of tender pig with such care that she had a couple finished.
 
"There," she exclaimed, as she tossed the two in the direction of the Senecas, "I like to see eat hog, and you might as well begin."
 
The red men , like a lot of school-boys after a handful of marbles, and had they been so many wolves, the food could hardly have disappeared with greater celerity.
 
Paying no attention to the Tory, who sat on the fallen tre............