Leaving Kate Merriweather in the hands of her as yet, to the reader, unknown abductor, and Oscar Parton a captive in the warriors’ canoe, let us return to two characters of whom, for a while, we have lost sight.

Deep in the forest that extended to the northern bank of the Maumee, and with but few trees felled about it, stood in the year ’94 and for several years afterwards, a small cabin erected after the manner of western buildings, with logs dovetailed, strong oaken doors and heavy clapboard roof.

So thickly stood the trees around it, that the keen-eyed hunter could not have perceived it at any noticeable distance.

No little patch of Indian corn grew near to indicate the home of a settler, and no honeysuckles shaded the low-browed door to tell that a woman’s gentle hand and loving taste had guided them heavenward.

It really looked like the lair of a beast, for there were cleanly-picked bones before the door, beside which a fresh wolf skin had been nailed.

It was not the home of refinement; but he who often slept beneath its roof and called it his, could sway hearts and drench the land in blood.

It stood scarce ten miles from the scene of Kate Merriweather’s abduction, a cabin memorable in the annals of the Northwestern Territory, for beyond its threshold the darkest treacheries of the times had been plotted.

About the hour when the fugitives beside the river discovered that one of their number had been taken from their midst, a man emerged from the forest, and stepping quickly across the space from door to tree, entered the cabin.

He did not have to stoop, as a tall person would have been compelled to do upon entering, for he was short in stature, but with a physique that denoted great strength

He was clad in the garb of a backwoodsman, and carried all the weapons borne by such a character. His face, almost brutish in anatomy, denoted the glutton, and his first step was to the larder, from which he drew an enormous chunk of meat upon which he fell with great voracity.

“It must be eleven o’clock,” he said, as he thrust the pewter plate empty into the cupboard, and went to the door as if to take observations. “He cannot be later than one, and, saying that it is eleven now, I have but two hours to wait. Can I trust the man? Haven’t I trusted him for six years, and where is the time that he has played me false? I have put money into his buckskin purse, and he knows that at a sign of betrayal I would kill him as heartlessly as I slew Parquatin at the council in the hollow. That council!” and the speaker clenched his lips, and his dark eyes shot flashes of fire from their lash-fringed caves of revenge.

“They made me kill the young chief,” he went on, as if speaking before a stern court in his own defense. “Or I should say that he made me do it. They say that I haven’t got a spark of manhood left—that I am the only devil in the Northwest Territory, and hunt and dog me on every side. I am a bad man, the worst perhaps in these parts. The Indian is my companion, and when he can’t invent new deviltry, he comes to me. But I have some good traits left. The dog that steals sheep and bites children is capable of loving his master. I have a brother, and though we have together trod the paths of iniquity from the trough cradle—though he has sought to lower me in the eyes of the tribes, I would not lift a hand against him. No, Simon Girty, your brother loves you because your mother was his; but,” and the renegade paused a moment, “but even a brother may wrong too deeply. Keep from me, Simon. Devil that I am, and fiend incarnate and powerful in these woods, I am capable of loving even you!”

These words, though spoken in a low tone, fell upon other ears than the White Whirlwind’s. Not far from his cabin door stood a great tree, gnarled and lightning-rent, and behind it, in its grotesque shadow, stood a lithe figure, girlish and graceful, and two brilliant eyes were fastened on the outlaw. The little hand that hung at the side and touched the beaded fringe of a trim frock, clutched a rifle which was cocked ready for instant use.

“He would never tell me; he may tell me now!” fell from the lips behind the tree. “He has been talking about his bad life, and may be the Manitou is smiling in his heart.”

With the last word on her lips, for the voice and figure denoted that the speaker was a girl, a figure stepped from the shadows and pronounced the renegade’s forest name.

Jim Girty started and retreated quickly, as if to secure a weapon, but his eye caught sight of the advancing person, and he recognized her with a strange mixture of affection and hatred in his eyes.

Areotha, or Little Moccasin, soon stood before the outlaw, looking into his repulsive face as if seeking a gleam of hope.

“Oh, it is you?” he said. “Well, well, I haven’t seen you for a mighty long time, but I have heard of you,” and his brow darkened.

“What has the White Whirlwind heard of Areotha?” the girl asked with childish artlessness, and she came very close to the man from whom many of her sex would turn with loathing.

“Why, they say that you have been spying for Mad Anthony Wayne,” he said, trying to catch the change of color on her face; but he failed, for none came. “If this is true, a bullet will find your heart some of these days, for I am an Indian as much as I am a white, and you must not spy against us. I am your father, but I cannot see how you came to love the accursed people who hunt me like wolves.”

He was speaking with much bitterness, and for a moment it seemed that Little Moccasin would forswear the Americans, and cleave to him. But that were impossible; the lamb cannot espouse the wolf’s cause.

“My father, why do you fight the people whose skin is white?” she said, after a minute’s silence. “You must have had a bad heart a long time, for when we lived in the land of the Miami’s, you scalped and burned as you do now. Little Moccasin loves you, but she loves all her white skinned people—but some better than others.”

The flush that came to the girl’s cheeks as she finished the last sentence did not escape Girty’s lightning glance.

“I suppose you have tumbled into love with some graceless fellow—some one who would shoot me just to marry an orphan. I know that you don’t go to the fort enough to fall in love with the British officers, and I’ll be hanged if you shall tie yourself to an American. This will never do, girl.”

Her eyes fell guiltily before his flashing look, and when she looked up again it was with an altered mien.

“Areotha will hear her father if he will tell her one thing,” she said.

“I’ll tell you a dozen if I can,” he replied. “Bless me, girl, if Jim Girty, bad as he is, doesn’t think a mighty sight of you.”

He stooped, and his brawny arm swung around her waist. She did not struggle, and he looked into her eyes. The lion seemed to be making love to the gazelle.“My father, long ago the bullet of the white man struck you down,” she said. “But you ran here and fell as the wild deer falls, in the brake beyond the hunter’s pursuit. Long you lay here; your head was wild and you said many things when the fever of the evil spirit was upon you. Areotha never left you, my father. She watched, lest the palefaces should come; she shot the deer and gave you food——”

“And saved the worst life in God’s world, didn’t you, girl?” interrupted the renegade, displaying more feeling as he drew the speaker to him than he had ever been credited with.

“Areotha did what she could,” was the reply. “One night, when the wolves went howling down the forest after the fawn which Areotha’s rifle had failed to kill, the White Whirlwind said something that made his child wonder. He made her know that he took her one night when she was a little girl; took her from a burning wigwam beyond the big river. She asked him then to tell her all, but he said: ’Wait till the sickness leaves me,’ and she waited. Now she is here; now she says, ’my father, tell me all, for in this war the bullet may find your heart, and Areotha will never know. Old Madgitwa did not bring me into the world; no, my father!”

The face and voice were so full of pleading that none but a Girty could resist.

His arm left the pliant waist, and his eyes resumed their old look.

“You are too inquisitive!” he said. “It doesn’t matter where I got you. You are mine, and the man—”

He paused as if he was about to reveal something, which he would rather keep back.

“My father, the Manitou, may send for Areotha, and the leaves will fall upon her before she can know who her real father is. Tell her. This may be the last time that she——”

“Tell you? No!” was the harsh interruption, and all the revenge in Girty’s nature seemed in his voice. “There are secrets which the stake could not force from me; this is one of them. There lives one man whom I wouldn’t make happy to save my own life, and sooner than see you in his arms, I would drive this knife to your heart.”

With a cry Little Moccasin started from the blade that flashed in the starlight, and threw herself on the defensive, with rifle half raised and eyes flashing angrily.

“You will not tell?” she cried.

“Never!”

The next instant she stepped toward the gnarled tree, and her rifle covered the renegade of the Maumee.

“You’ve got me!” he said, looking into Areotha’s face without a tremor of fear; “but I did not think that you would ever lift a rifle against the man who has been so kind to you. Kill me here, now, and the secret will be kept from you forever!”

There was a spark of hope in his voice, and all at once the girl lowered the weapon. The outlaw was spared to scourge the region of the Maumee a while longer.

Areotha put herself into his power when she lowered the rifle. With one of those panther-like bounds for which he was famous, Girty could have sprung upon her and removed her forever from his path. But he restrained himself; he even put up the knife, and did not seek to detain her when he heard her say:

“My father, I am going!”

With a look that spoke volumes, Little Moccasin turned on her heel, and plunged into the forest, leaving the renegade to his own reflections.

“I think a mighty sight of her!” was all he said.

He might have killed her, but he would not.