The Hidden Children by Robert William Chambers Chapter 20 Page 3

valley; all night the spectral whip-poor-will whispered its husky, frightened warning. And long after midnight a tiny bird awoke and sang monotonously for an hour or more.

Awaiting an attack from Catharines-town at any moment, we dared not make a fire or even light a torch. Rotten trunks which had fallen across the stream we dragged out and piled up across the mouth of the pass to make a defence; but we could do no more than that; and, our efforts ended, my Indians sat in a circle cross-legged, quietly hooping and stretching their freshly taken scalps by the dim light of the stars, and humming their various airs of triumph in low, contented, and purring voices. All laboured under subdued excitement, the brief and almost silent slaughter in the ferns having thoroughly aroused them. But the tension showed only in moments of