We shall leave him to his vacillating and
confused expedients, in order to pass to the description of certain
other personages in the drama.
There was still another corner of the picture that was occupied. On a
little bank, at the extreme right of the encampment, lay the forms of
Middleton and Paul. Their limbs were painfully bound with thongs, cut
from the skin of a bison, while, by a sort of refinement in cruelty,
they were so placed, that each could see a reflection of his own
misery in the case of his neighbour. Within a dozen yards of them a
post was set firmly in the ground, and against it was bound the light
and Apollo-like person of Hard-Heart. Between the two stood the
trapper, deprived of his rifle, his pouch and his horn, but otherwise
left in a sort of contemptuous liberty. Some five or six young
warriors, however, with quivers at their backs, and long tough bows
dangling from their shoulders, who stood with grave watchfulness at no
great distance from the spot, sufficiently proclaimed how fruitless
any attempt to escape, on the part of one so aged and so feeble, might
prove.
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