Indian whom he had shot. An explanation was immediately required.

"I told you, colonel," said the man, "that I should fire if I heard the least noise. That resolution I took has saved my life. I had not been long at my post when I heard a rustling at some short distance; I looked and saw a wild hog, such as are common in the woods, crawling along the ground, and seemingly looking for nuts under the trees, among the leaves.

"As these animals are so very common, I ceased to consider it seriously, but kept my eyes fixed upon it, and marked its progress among the trees; still there was no need to give the alarm. It struck me, however, as somewhat singular to see this animal making, by a circuitous passage, for a thick grove immediately behind my post. I therefore kept my eye more constantly fixed upon it, and, as it was now within a few yards of the coppice, I hesitated whether I should fire.

"My comrades, thought I, will laugh at me for alarming them by shooting a pig. I had almost resolved to let it alone, when, just as it approached the thicket, I thought I observed it give an unusual spring. I no longer hesitated; I took my aim, discharged my piece, and the animal was immediately stretched before me, with a groan which I thought to be that of a human creature.

"I went up to it, and judge of my astonishment when I found that I had killed an Indian. He had enveloped himself with the skin of one of these wild hogs so artfully and completely, his hands and his feet were so entirely concealed in it, and his gait and appearance were so exactly correspondent to that of the animals, that, imperfectly as they were always seen through the trees and bushes the disguise could not be detected. at a distance, and scarcely discovered upon the nearest inspection. He was armed with a dagger and a tomahawk."

The cause of the disappearance of the other sentinels was now apparent. The Indians, sheltered in this disguise, secreted themselves in the coppice, watched for the moment to throw off the hogskin, burst upon the sentinels without previous alarm,

and, too quick to give them an opportunity to discharge their pieces, either stabbed or tomahawked them. They then bore their bodies away and concealed them at some distance in the leaves, which were thick on the ground.

II. THE MOHAWK'S LAST ARROW.

When the Grand Monarque, Louis XIV., ruled France, he appointed one of his favorite courtiers, the Chevalier de Frontenac, Governor-General of New France, or Konnedieya. Some years after Count de Frontenac became viceregent, the warlike Five Nations (afterward six), "The Romans of America," proved themselves soldiers of the highest order. This they did not only by carrying their arms among the native tribes a thousand miles away, and striking their enemies alike upon the lakes of Maine, the mountains of Carolina and the prairies of Missouri; but they had already bearded one European army beneath the walls of Quebec, and shut up another for weeks within the defenses of Montreal, with the same courage that, half a century later, vanquished the battalions of Dieskau, upon the banks of Lake George.

To punish the savages for their "insolence," and bring them under subjection, the commander-in-chief, the veteran Governor Frontenac, organized an expedition to invade the country of the Five Nations, and marshaled his forces at La Chine on July 4, 1696. The aged chevalier was said to have other objects in view besides the political motives for the expedition.

It seems that many years previous, when the Five Nations had invested the capital of New France and threatened the extermination of that thriving colony, a beautiful half-blood girl, whose education had been commenced under the immediate auspices of the Governor-General, and in whom, indeed, M. de Frontenac was said to have a parental interest, was carried off, with other prisoners, by the retiring foe. Every effort had been made in vain during the occasional cessations of hostilities

*Since corrupted into Canada, "Beautiful Water," probably so called from the amber-like color of many of its streams.

between the French and the Iroquois, to recover this girl; and though, in the years that intervened, some wandering Jesuit from time to time averred that he had seen the Christian captive living as the contented wife of a young Mohawk warrior, yet the old nobleman seems never to have despaired of reclaiming his "nut-brown daughter." Indeed the chevalier must have been impelled by some such hope when, at the age of seventy, and so feeble that he was half the time carried in a litter, he ventured to encounter the perils of an American wilderness and place himself at the head of the heterogeneous bands which now invaded the country of the Five Nations, under his command.

Among the half-breed spies, border scouts and mongrel adventurers that followed in the train of the invading army was a renegade Fleming of the name of Hanyost. This man in early youth had been made a sergeant-major, when he deserted to the French ranks in Flanders. He had subsequently taken up a military grant in Canada, sold it after emigrating, and then, making his way down to the Dutch settlements on the Hudson, had become a sojourner among their old allies, the Mohawks, and adopted the life of a hunter. Hanyost, hearing that his old friends, the French, were making such a formidable descent, did not hesitate to desert his more recent acquaintances and offer his services as a guide to Count Frontenac the moment he entered the hostile country. It was not, however, mere cupidity or the habitual love of treachery which actuated the base Fleming in this instance. Hanyost, in a difficulty with. an Indian trapper, which had been referred for arbitrament to a young Mohawk chief, Kiodago (a settler of disputes), whose cool courage and firmness fully entitled him to so distinguished a name, conceived himself aggrieved by the award which had been given against him. The scorn with which the arbitrator met his charge of unfairness stung him to the soul, and fearing the arm of the powerful savage, he had nursed the revenge in secret, whose accomplishment seemed now at hand. Kiodago, ignorant of the hostile force which had entered his country, was off with his band at a fishing station, or summer