HOME AGAIN. 269 



The women had been removed to the recesses of the 

 swamps, extra quantities of lead and powder had been 

 l)urchased, a census had been made of all the white 

 inhabitants residing on the debatable land, and the 

 forces had been appointed so many braves to each de- 

 partment ; at the same time, no change in the demeanor 

 of the red men marked their determination ; they came 

 and went the same as before, and bartered and hunted 

 without a word of mistrust or dishke. The very day had 

 been fixed, and the hour ; and that night, while the laugh 

 was so loud by the camp-fire at Bonda Key, and while 

 soothed by the murmurs of the sea, we passed away to 

 the land of dreams, the red eye of Indian warfare was 

 on us all the while, and we knew it not. While we 

 were cooking and eating our meal, and when we laid 

 down to sleep, a tawny figure was turning its basilisk 

 face toward us from a clump of thickly clustered 

 trees that grew some fifty yards from our tents. It 

 could not be seen in the shadows, and the land breeze 

 that blew from us to it prevented the dogs smelling it, 

 and giving indications of its presence. No motion 

 attested weariness, no sound betokened its cat-like arrival. 

 It was the skeleton at the feast. 



As the morning warmed the east, the figure melted 

 away with the wan colors of the sky, and when Mike left 

 the camp to loiter around, for his usual morning walk, he 

 found the dew disturbed on the grass, and following the 

 slight trail, he carried it to the edge of a bayou, where 

 he noticed the rushes were divided as though they had 



