Red Belt, the Tuscarora — page 65: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

CHAPTER XII. SHADOWS BY MOONLIGHT. Niext, dark and impenetrable, had fallen upon the Indian village, and gradually all sounds died away. In an hour, all was silence. Roydon Howe was again bound to the pole in ~ the center of the tent, and there left. Away off in another section of the village, toward the dark line of forest land, which marked the course of the winding Scioto, a single lodge, solitary and alone, reared itself in the gloom. The nearest tent to this was distant several hundred paces. The curtain of skins was rolled down before the en- trance, and every thing was silence there. A dark form slid along cautiously and noiselessly, through -' the dense undergrowth, toward the lodge. Itwasa man. He occasionally paused, and then, after listening intently for a moment, would steal on again—his tread as soft as a cats, and giving forth no sound soever. Onward he glided, and at last stood near the clearing in front of the tent, and almost with- out the dark underbrush. a pale, rapidly-increasing light, half spectral, half real, glowed down and fell straight upon the curtain, covering ..*he entrance to the lodge. It was the moon climbing slowly up into the dark sky. The man started, and for an instant forgot his caution, In. advertently his foot trod heavily down, and a dry twig snapped with a preternatural distinctness in the air. The man paused at once, and remained as motionless as a-statue. Thus he ‘stood for several moments, scarcely breathing, and his dark form: so commingling with the deep shade of the underbrush, that the sharpest eye could not detect it. But then he stole forward once more, and in a few eo oR had cleared the undergrowth and stood in the now bright moonlight. He was a tall, swarthy savage, and in his right hand he carried a strong PARE A PEFR S68 bp, fho - tense cord. aoe conmicldboolkks.conn ee