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288 turned to her own wigwam, with a dull pain at her heart.

As Josh reached the bottom of the hill, he heard a horse neigh, and at the same moment a hand was laid upon his shoulder.

"Caught again," he thought, instinctively making a supreme effort to escape from his invisible foe, but the grip was of iron, and he knew at once who it was that held him down, when a voice said, speaking in English, but with a soft Indian intonation—

"Quiet! Josiah Blackstone, do you think, if I had not willed it, you would be alive now? Twice I have saved your life, and now a third time, because we have been friends and you have smoked the calumet in my wigwam; but from henceforth we are as strangers. I know you no more." As he spoke he loosed his hold, and Josh, turning, saw the gigantic form of the Sachem King Philip, with the crested plume on his head, looming forth, a huge shadow in the darkness.

"You have saved me from death, but you have subjected me to indignities worse than death," said Josh; "nevertheless I thank you, for surely you meant well."

"If I had not carried you off they would have killed you as they did your companions," said Philip, "and a prisoner's fate is torture and death; only to the few is it granted to run the gantlet and to live. I gave you a chance, you have won, and I let you go forth free. Would your people have done as much for me? Have you not driven us out of our own lands, where our fathers hunted? When the white men first trod our shores we bade them welcome, offering, in exchange for a few cartloads of cloths, trinkets, and guns, to share the land with them and dwell together in peace. We were foolish, not knowing that where the white man sets his foot he must be sole master. You clear our forests, you build houses, you make towns, and we are driven farther and farther