Thee poor women shall come to no harm, if Nathan Slaughter or little Dog Peter can help them." With these words of encouragement, Nathan, bounding along with an activity that kept him ever in advance of the mounted wanderers, led the way from the open forest into a labyrinth of brakes and bogs, through paths traced rather by wolves and bears than any nobler animals, so wild, so difficult, and sometimes, in appearance, so impracticable to be pursued, that Roland, bewildered from the first, looked every moment to find himself plunged into difficulties from which neither the zeal of Nathan nor the sagacity of the unpretending Peter could extricate his weary followers.

The night was coming fast, and coming with clouds and distant peals of thunder, the harbingers of new tempests; and how the journey was to be continued, when darkness should at last invest them, through the wild mazes of vine and brake in which they now wandered, was a question which he scarce durst answer.

But night came, and still Nathan led the way with unabated confidence and activity, professing a very hearty contempt for all perils and difficulties of the woods, except such as proceeded from "evil-minded Shawnee creatures;" and, indeed, averring that there was scarce a nook in the forest, for miles around, with which he was not as well acquainted as with the patches of his own leathern garments.

"Truly," said he, "when I first came to this land, I did make me a little cabin in a place hard by; but the Injuns burned the same; and, verily, had it not been for little Peter, who gave me a hint of their coming, I should have been burned with it.

Be of good heart, friend: if thee will keep the ill-meaning Injun-men out of my way, I will adventure to lead thee anywhere thee will, within twenty miles of this place, on the darkest night, and that through the thickest cane, or deepest swamp, thee can lay eyes on,--that is, if I have but little dog Peter to help me.