one of the lower ornaments of the Indian war-dress, while,
at the same moment, the wild moaning of Loup Garou, then
standing at the front door-way, was renewed even more
plaintively than before.

Mr. Heywood's cheek blanched. It was not with fear, for
he was a man incapable of fear in the common acceptation
of the word, but independently of certain vague
apprehensions for others, his mind had been in a great
degree unhinged by an unaccountable presentiment of evil,
which instinctively had come over it that day. It was
this, that, inducing a certain irresoluteness of thought
and action, had led him into a manifestation of peevish
contradiction in his address to Ephraim Giles. There are
moments, when, without knowing why, the nerves of the
strongest--the purposes of the wisest, are unstrung--and
when it requires all our tact and self-possession to
conceal from others, the momentary weakness we almost
blush to admit to ourselves.

But there was no time for reflection. The approach to
the door was suddenly shaded, and in the next instant
the dark forms of three or four savages, speedily followed
by others, amounting in all to twelve, besides their
chief, who was in the advance, crossed the threshold,
and, without uttering a word, either of anger or salutation,
squatted themselves upon the floor. They were stout,
athletic warriors, the perfect symmetry of whose persons
could not be concealed even by the hideous war-paint with
which they were thickly streaked--inspiring anything but