se brutal Englishmen. Don't you wish he would, Adrienne? Wouldn't it
be romantic?"

"He's armed, I know that," said Adrienne, brightening a little, "and
he's brave, Alice, brave as can be. He came right back into town the
other night and got his gun and pistols. He was at our house, too, and,
oh!--"

She burst out crying again. "O Alice! It breaks my heart to think that
the Indians will kill him. Do you think they will kill him, Alice?"

"He'll come nearer killing them," said Alice confidently, with her
strong, warm arms around the tiny lass; "he's a good woodsman, a fine
shot--he's not so easy to kill, my dear. If he and Papa Roussillon
should get together by chance they would be a match for all the Indians
in the country. Anyway, I feel that it's much better for them to take
their chances in the woods than to be in the hands of Governor
Hamilton. If I were a man I'd do just as Papa Roussillon and Rene did;
I'd break the bigoted head of every Englishman that mistreated me, I'll
do it, girl as I am, if they annoy me, see if I don't!"

She was thinking of Captain Farnsworth, who had been from the first
untiring in his efforts to gain something more than a passing
acquaintance. As yet he had not made himself unbearable; but Alice's
fine intuition led her to the conclusion that she must guard against
him from the outset.

Adrienne's simple heart could not grasp the romantic criterion with
which Alice was wont to measure action. Her mind was single, impulsive,
narrow and direct in all its movements. She loved, hated, desired,
caressed, repulsed, not for any assignable reason more solid or more
luminous than "because." She adored Rene and wanted him near her. He
was a hero in her imagination, no matter what he did. Little difference
was it to her whether he hauled logs for the English or smoked his pipe
in idleness by the winter fire--what could it matter which flag he
served under, so that he was true to her? Or whom he served if she
could always have him coming to see her and calling her his little pet?
He might crush an Irish Corporal's head every day, if he would but
stroke her hair and say: "My sweet little one."

"Why couldn't he be quiet and do as your man, Lieutenant Beverley,
did?" she cried in a sudden change of mood, the tears streaming down
her cheeks. "Lieutenant Beverley surrendered and took the consequences.
He didn't kill somebody and run off to be hunted like a bear. No wonder
you're happy, Alice; I'd