with the strength of a giant, he endeavored to drag him down from the saddle, uttering a shout as he did so.

The hussar, though slight of frame, seemed to possess considerable nerve and activity, for he resisted the effort with great adroitness, by throwing himself to the further side of the saddle, while he instinctively leveled his pistol and fired.

The grim recluse uttered a savage cry of pain as the bullet plowed his shoulder, and grappled the slender soldier with such power that he lost a stirrup, let go his bridle and tried to push away his assailant with his left hand, while he cocked the other barrel of his pistol with his right.

How the struggle might have terminated is uncertain, but just as the soldier was almost out of the saddle, and bringing his pistol to bear, a score of dark forms sprung from the roadside, and Adrian Schuyler was seized by strong hands, the pistol going off in the struggle.

A moment later he was a prisoner, while the charger, freed from his burden, and snorting with terror, gave a series of flying kicks at the crowd of Indians, broke loose from all restraint, snapping the cord which bound him to the unknown spy, and galloped away toward Derryfield, neighing as he went.

“Hell’s furies, give him an arrow!” cried the spy, savagely. “Stop the brute, or he’ll alarm the town! Fools, have ye no bows?”

The answer was given in a shower of arrows after the flying steed, which only seemed to increased its speed, for it[Pg 27] soon vanished in the gathering darkness, leaving its master a captive.

[Pg 27]

The reflections of Adrian Schuyler were by no means pleasant at finding himself in the power of his quondam prisoner. Too late he recognized the trap into which he had fallen, and that he had made a bitter and remorseless enemy.

The spy, for such he evidently was, seemed to be the leader of the Indians; he issued his orders as peremptorily as a chief, and was implicitly obeyed.

He did not deign to take any notice of the hussar himself, but in a few moments the latter found himself stripped of all his weapons, while the handcuffs were transferred from the wrists of the recluse to his own, and he was hurried off into the darkening woods.

The white leader remained on the spot where the fracas had occurred, gazing 

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