Bound to two strong posts near the Council-house, their arms drawn high above their heads, a circle of brush-wood, prairie-grass, and other combustibles heaped around them, were two wretched captives,--white men, from whose persons a dozen savage hands were tearing their garments, while as many more were employed heaping additional fuel on the pile.

One of these men, as Edith could see full well, for the spectacle was scarce a hundred paces removed, was Roaring Ralph, the captain of horse-thieves.

The other--and _that_ was a sight to rend her eye-balls from their sockets,--was her unfortunate kinsman, the playmate of her childhood, the friend and lover of maturer years,--her cousin,--brother,--her all,--Roland Forrester.

It was no error of sight, no delusion of mind: the spectacle was too palpable to be doubted: it was Roland Forrester whom she saw, chained to the stake, surrounded by yelling and pitiless barbarians, impatient for the commencement of their infernal pastime, while the wife of the chief, kneeling at the pile, was already endeavouring, with her brand, to kindle it into flame.
The shriek of the wretched maiden, as she beheld the deplorable, the maddening sight, might have melted hearts of stone, had there been even such among the Indians.

But Indians, engaged in the delights of torturing a prisoner, are, as the dead chief had boasted himself, _without_ heart.
Pity, which the Indian can feel at another moment, as deeply, perhaps, and benignly as a white man, seems then, and is, entirely unknown, as much so, indeed, as if it had never entered into his nature.