Nick of the Woods; Or, Adventures of Prairie Life

The morning-star, peeping into the hollow den of the wanderers, was yet bright on the horizon, when Roland was roused from his slumbers by Nathan, who had already risen and prep...

The following day was one of unusual animation and bustle in the Indian village, as the prisoners could distinguish even from their several places of confinement, without, howev...

Men and boys had rushed from the fortress together, to greet the new comers, and few remained save the women; of whom not a few, particularly of the younger individuals, were as...

The roar of the moving flood, for such, by its noise, it seemed, as they descended the river-bank, to which Nathan had so skilfully conducted them, awoke in Roland's bosom a fee...

When the soldier recovered his senses, it was to wonder again at the change that had come over the scene. The loud yells, the bitter taunts, the mocking laughs, were heard no mo...

The night was brilliantly clear, the stars shining with an excess of lustre, with which Nathan would perhaps, at that moment, have gladly dispensed, since it was by no means fav...

From an uneasy slumber, into which, notwithstanding his sufferings of mind and body, he had at last fallen, Roland was roused at the break of day by a horrible clamour, that sud...

The light struck by the negro was soon succeeded by a fire, for which ample materials lay ready at hand among the ruins; and as it blazed up from the broken and long deserted he...

While Nathan lay watching at the renegade's hut, there came a change over the aspect of the night, little less favourable to his plans and hopes than even the discovery of Edith...

The flaming arrows were still shot in vain at the water-soaked roof, and the combustibles with which they were armed, burning out very rapidly, produced hut little of that effec...

By dint of chafing and bathing in the spring, still foul and red with the blood of the Piankeshaws, the limbs of the soldier soon recovered their strength, and he was able to ri...

"If you're ralely ripe for a fight, Roaring Ralph," cried Tom Bruce the younger, who had shown, like the others, a greater disposition to jest than to do battle with the champio...

The agony which Roland suffered from the thong so tightly secured upon his wrists, was so far advantageous as it distracted his mind from the subject which had been at first the...

There was little really superstitious in the temper of Captain Forrester; and however his mind might be at first stirred by the discovery of a victim of the redoubted fiend so d...

The sun of an August afternoon, 1782, was yet blazing upon the rude palisades and equally rude cabins of one of the principal stations in Lincoln county, when a long train of em...

The distance at which Roland with his party followed the guides, and the gloom of the woods, prevented his making any close observations upon their motions, unless when some swe...

The sun shone out clearly and brilliantly, and the tree-tops, from which the winds had already shaken the rain, rustled freshly to the more moderate breezes that had succeeded t...

The conflict, though sharp and hot, considering the insignificant number of combatants on either side, was of no very long duration, the whole time, from the appearance of the K...

With the battle at the Black-Vulture's town, the interest of our history ceases; and there it may be said to have its end. The deliverance of the cousins, the one from captivity...

The night was even darker than before, the fire of the Wyandotts on the square had burned so low as no longer to send even a ray to the hut of Wenonga, and the wind, though subs...

In the meantime, and at the very moment when the renegade was urging his extraordinary proposals to the young Virginian, a scene was passing in the hut of Wenonga, in which one...

The evening meal being concluded, and a few brief moments devoted to conversation with her new friends, Edith was glad, when, at a hint from her kinsman as to the early hour app...

When Roland recovered his consciousness, he was no longer a prisoner extended beneath the Indian cross. His limbs were unbound, and he himself lying across the knees of a man wh...

These symptoms of anxiety and alarm affected Edith's own spirits; they did more,--they shook her faith in the justice of her kinsman's conclusions. His arguments in relation to...

"He is going to the Lower Ford," said Telie, anxiously. "It is not too late for us to follow him. If there are Indians in the wood, it is the only way to escape them!"

In the meanwhile, Edith sat in the tent abandoned to despair, her mind not yet recovered from the stunning effect of her calamity, struggling confusedly with images of blood and...

"No, by Jehoshaphat," replied Tom; "but nigh enough to be neighbourly,--on the north bank of Kentuck, whar he has left his mark right in the middle of the road, as fresh as thou...

The enemy, twice repulsed, and on both occasions with severe loss, had been taught the folly of exposing themselves too freely to the fire of the travellers; but although driven...

Thus fell the young Kentuckian,--a youth endeared to all who knew him, by his courage and good humour; and whose fall would, at a moment of less confusion, have created a deep a...

The convulsion was but momentary, and departed with almost the same suddenness that marked its accession. Nathan started half up, looked wildly around him, surveying the bodies...

Within an hour after the emigrants had set out, the sky, which had previously been clear and radiant, began to be overcast with clouds, dropping occasional rains, which Roland s...

The amazement of Stackpole at finding to whom he owed his deliverance, was not less than that of the travellers; but it was mingled, in his case, with feelings of the most unbou...

The twilight was darkening in the west, when the three adventurers, stealing through tangled thickets, and along lonely ridges, carefully avoiding all frequented paths, looked o...

Dodge's story, which was not without its interest to Roland, though the rapidity of their progress through the woods, and the constant necessity of being on the alert, kept him...

The roar of the river, alternating with peals of thunder, which were now loud and frequent, awake many an anxious pang in Roland's bosom, as he lifted his half-unconscious kinsw...

It was at a critical period when the travellers effected their escape from the scene of their late sufferings. The morning was already drawing nigh, and might, but for the heavy...