through the open window. He saw them a moment afterward, however, for,
while he was absorbed in that particular part of the fight at Glen's
Falls, where Hawk-Eye snapped his unloaded rifle at the Indian who was
making off with the canoe in which the scout had left his ammunition, a
figure glided quickly but noiselessly into the room, and stopped behind
the boy's chair.

"Now, my opinion is that Hawk-Eye was not much of a backwoodsman, after
all," said Frank, who was in the habit of commenting upon and
criticising every thing he read. "Why did he leave his extra powder-horn
in his canoe, when he knew that the Hurons were all around him? You
wouldn't catch Dick or old Bob Kelly in any such scrape, nor me either,
for that matter, for I would"--

Frank's soliloquy was brought to a close very suddenly, and what he was
about to say must forever remain a secret. His throat was seized with an
iron grasp, and he was lifted bodily out of his chair, and thrown upon
the floor. So quickly was it done that he had no time to resist or to
cry out. Before he could realize what had happened, he found himself
lying flat on his back, and felt a heavy weight upon his breast holding
him down.

Filled with surprise and indignation, he looked up into the face that
was bending over him, and recognized Pierre Costello, whose features
wore a fiendish expression, the effect of which was heightened by a
murderous-looking knife which he carried between his teeth. Scowling
fiercely, as if he were trying to strike terror to the boy's heart by
his very appearance, he loosened his grasp on Frank's throat, and the
latter, after coughing and swallowing to overcome the effects of the
choking he had received, demanded: