“Your fate,” answered the stranger, in a hollow voice.

“My fate?” echoed Burgoyne, contemptuously. “Perhaps, then, you are the masquerading rebel who has frightened my Indians?”

[Pg 43]

[Pg 43]

“I am the demon of the forest,” answered the other, in the same hollow tones.

Burgoyne laughed scornfully.

“Indeed? Then you are just the man I want to see. Here, sentry?”

He strode to the door and threw it open, expecting to see the sentry usually stationed there.

There, across the threshold, lay the dead body of the soldier, in a pool of blood!

Horror-stricken, Sir John recoiled a moment. Then, whipping out his sword, he stalked up to the stranger, saying sternly:

“You have done this, but, by heaven, you shall not escape.”

The unknown remained impassive, with his arms folded, and only smiled sardonically.

“I told you I was your fate,” he said. “Be warned in time. Go back while you may. A week hence will be too late.”

“Fool,” said the English General, contemptuously, “you may frighten superstitious savages with your hocus-pocus, not me. Surrender, or you are a dead man.”

For all answer the stranger advanced on the General with folded arms, while fire and smoke began to issue from his mouth!

Incensed at the exhibition, Burgoyne made a violent thrust at the other with his sword.

The weapon snapped on the stranger’s body as if it had been made of glass, and the next instant Burgoyne felt the pressure of long, skinny fingers on his throat, which he in vain tried to throw off, while the stranger, with gigantic strength, pressed him backward and backward, till he lay bent over his knee, slowly choking to death.

What would have been the result of this scene is not doubtful, but, just at that moment, the sound of 

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