"You know how it is with father sometimes, Judith," she said, "When
overtaken with liquor he doesn't always know what he says or does,
and he seems to be overtaken with liquor now."
"That is strange! Would the savages have drunk with him, and then
leave him behind? But 'tis a grievous sight to a child, Hetty,
to witness such a failing in a parent, and we will not go near him
'til he wakes."
A groan from the inner room, however, changed this resolution,
and the girls ventured near a parent whom it was no unusual thing
for them to find in a condition that lowers a man to the level of
brutes. He was seated, reclining in a corner of the narrow room
with his shoulders supported by the angle, and his head fallen
heavily on his chest. Judith moved forward with a sudden impulse,
and removed a canvass cap that was forced so low on his head as to
conceal his face, and indeed all but his shoulders. The instant
this obstacle was taken away, the quivering and raw flesh, the bared
veins and muscles, and all the other disgusting signs of mortality,
as they are revealed by tearing away the skin, showed he had been
scalped, though still living.
Chapter XXI.
"Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone,
And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him;
But nothing he'll reck, if they'll let him sleep on,
In the grave where a Briton has laid him.
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