pected to pass the night, but one mass of flame. And around it were a score of dark forms, leaping and dancing, and appearing in the ghastly light, like fiends in a ghostly revel.
Graham stood a moment spell-bound with horror and amazement. He expected to see the reeking bodies of Haverland and his family, or hear their groans of agony; but, as he continued gazing, he became convinced that they were either slain or had escaped, as there were no signs of their presence. He could not think they had escaped, and was compelled to believe they had been tomahawked, and had perished in the flames.
It was a ghastly and almost unearthly sight—the small cabin, crackling and roaring in one mass of living flame, throwing strange shadows across the clearing, and lighting up the edges of the forest with a brightness almost as great as the sun at noonday—the score of dusky beings, leaping and shouting in wild exultation, and the vast wilderness, shutting down like an ocean of darkness around.
Gradually the flames lessened, and the woods seemed to retreat into the gloom; the shouts of the savages ceased, and they too, disappeared; and the building, which hitherto was a mass of crackling fire, was now a heap of slumbering coals and embers, which glowed with a hot redness in the darkness.
An hour or two afterward, a shadowy form could have been seen gliding stealthily and silently around the glowing ruins. He appeared like a specter as seen by the reflected light of the slumbering coals, or might have been taken for the shadow of some ruin of the building. At intervals, he paused and listened, as though he half expected to hear the footfall of some one, and then again continued his ghostly march around the ruins. Several times he stopped and peered into the embers, as though he supposed the whitened bones of some human being would greet his vision, and then he recoiled and stood as if in deep and painful thought. It was Everard Graham, searching for the remains of Haverland and his family.
"I see nothing," he said musingly, "and it may be that they have escaped, or perhaps their bodies are now cooking in that heap of coals, and yet something tells me that they are not. And if it is not thus, what can have become of them?
