A mountain weight seemed to have been removed from the
breast of Clara at this sight, as she now dropped upon
her knees before the window, and raised her hands in
pious acknowledgment to Heaven.
"Almighty God, I thank thee," she fervently exclaimed,
her eye once more lighting up, and her cheek half suffused
with blushes at her late vague and idle fears; while she
embraced, at a single glance, the whole of the gladdening
and inspiriting scene.
While her soul was yet upturned whither her words had
gone before, her ears were again assailed by sounds that
curdled her blood, and made her spring to her feet as if
stricken by a bullet through the heart; or powerfully
touched by some electric fluid. It was the well-known
and devilish war-cry of the savages, startling the very
air through which it passed, and falling like a deadly
blight upon the spirit. With a mechanical and desperate
effort at courage, the unhappy girl turned her eyes below,
and there met images of death in their most appalling
shapes. Hurry and confusion and despair were every where
visible; for a band of Indians were already in the fort,
and these, fast succeeded by others, rushed like a torrent
into the square, and commenced their dreadful work of
butchery.
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