On approaching it, he found that the
body was lifeless, while from the red and scalpless head,
previously hidden from his view, were exuding gouts of
thick blood that trickled slowly over the pale features
of a youth of tender age, the expression of which had
been worked up into an intensity of terror, and there
remained. At a few paces from the head, and close upon
the edge of the bank, lay a dressed bear skin which had
evidently been saturated with water, but was now fast
drying in the air and what little sunlight was occasionally
thrown upon it, through the dense branches of the forest.
There are situations in which the mind is moved to do
that from which in cooler moments it would shrink with
disgust. It chanced that Collins had retained the scalp
so singularly found at the bottom of the river, by Corporal
Nixon, and this circumstance at once determined him.
Instead of hastening by an object so appalling, Collins
rested his musket against a tree, and taking the scalp
from between the ramrod and the stock, where he had
introduced it, knelt by the body, and spreading out the
humid skin to its fullest extent, applied it to the
bleeding excavation.
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