290 TEAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPOET. 



distinguished a grotesque figure, painted in gaudy 

 colours, and whose diadem of feathers, tomahawk, 

 scalping -knife, and wampum, denoted the Indian 

 chief. Beneath this sign a row of hieroglyphic- 

 looking characters informed the passer-by that he 

 could here find "Entertainment for man and beast." 

 On that side of the house, or rather hut, next to the 

 road, was a row of wooden sheds, separated from the 

 path by a muddy ditch, and partly filled with hay 

 and straw. These cribs might have been supposed 

 the habitations of the cows, had not some dirty bed- 

 ding, that protruded from them, denoted them to be 

 the sleeping apartments of those travellers whose evil 

 star compelled them to pass the night at the sign of 

 the Indian King. A stable and pig-sty completed the 

 appurtenances of this backwood dwelling. 



It was a stormy December night ; the wind howled 

 fiercely through the gloomy pine-forest, on the skirt 

 of which the block-house stood, and the rapidly suc- 

 ceeding crashes of the huge trees, as, with a report 

 like thunder, the storm bore them to the ground, pro- 

 claimed the violence of one of those tornadoes that so 

 frequently rage between the Blue Mountains of Ten- 

 nessee and the flats of the Mississippi, sweeping with 

 them, in their passage, trees, houses, and villages. 

 Suddenly, in the midst of the storm, a gentle tapping 

 was heard at the window-shutter of the block-house, 

 to which succeeded, after a short interval, a series of 

 heavy blows, causing the timbers of the dwelling to 



