All these had been bestowed, as they had been acquired, by the generous chief, on his subordinates, to purchase an influence that might render him the master of their lives and persons; a species of wealth that was certainly more noble in itself, and far dearer to his ambition.
The old man well knew this to be the lodge of Mahtoree, and, in obedience to the sign of the chief, he held his way towards it with slow and reluctant steps.

But there were others present, who were equally interested in the approaching conference, whose apprehensions were not to be so easily suppressed.

The watchful eye and jealous ears of Middleton had taught him enough to fill his soul with horrible forebodings.

With an incredible effort he succeeded in gaining his feet, and called aloud to the retiring trapper-- "I conjure you, old man, if the love you bore my parents was more than words, or if the love you bear your God is that of a Christian man, utter not a syllable that may wound the ear of that innocent--" Exhausted in spirit and fettered in limbs, he then fell, like an inanimate log, to the earth, where he lay like one dead.
Paul had however caught the clue and completed the exhortation, in his peculiar manner.
"Harkee, old trapper," he shouted, vainly endeavouring at the same time to make a gesture of defiance with his hand; "if you ar' about to play the interpreter, speak such words to the ears of that damnable savage, as becomes a white man to use, and a heathen to hear.

Tell him, from me, that if he does or says the thing that is uncivil to the girl, called Nelly Wade, that I'll curse him with my dying breath; that I'll pray for all good Christians in Kentucky to curse him; sitting and standing; eating and drinking, fighting, praying, or at horse-races; in-doors and outdoors; in summer or winter, or in the month of March in short I'll--ay, it ar' a fact, morally true--I'll haunt him, if the ghost of a Pale-face can contrive to lift itself from a grave made by the hands of a Red-skin!" Having thus ventured the most terrible denunciation he could devise, and the one which, in the eyes of the honest bee-hunter, there seemed the greatest likelihood of his being able to put in execution, he was obliged to await the fruits of his threat, with that resignation which would be apt to govern a western border-man who, in addition to the prospects just named, had the advantage of contemplating them in fetters and bondage.