uch in the other side of the balance;
justice, the discipline and confidence of his little army, and the
claim of the women and children on the frontier demanded firmness in
dealing with a case like Long-Hair's.

"No, no," he said to Beverley, "I would do anything in the world for
you, Fitz, except to swerve an inch from duty to my country and the
defenceless people down yonder in Kentucky, I can't do it. There's no
use to press the matter further. The die is cast. That brute's got to
be killed, and killed dead. Look at him--look at that scalp! I'd have
him killed if I dropped dead for it the next instant."

Beverley shuddered. The argument was horribly convincing, and yet,
somehow, the desire to save Long-Hair overbore everything else in his
mind. He could not cease his efforts; it seemed to him as if he were
pleading for Alice herself. Captain Farnsworth, strange to say, was the
only man in the fort who leaned to Beverley's side; but he was
reticent, doubtless feeling that his position as a British prisoner
gave him no right to speak, especially when every lip around him was
muttering something about "infamous scalp-buyers and Indian partisans,"
with whom he was prominently counted by the speakers.

As Clark had said, the die was cast. Long-Hair, bound to a stake, the
scalp still dangling at his side, grimly faced his executioners, who
were eager to fire. He appeared to be proud of the fact that he was
going to be killed.

"One thing I can say of him," Helm remarked to Beverley; "he's the
grandest specimen of the animal--I might say the brute--man that I ever
saw, red, white or black. Just look at his body and limbs! Those
muscles are perfectly marvelous."

"He saved my life, and I must stand here and see him murdered," the
young man replied with intense bitterness. It was all that he could
think, all that he could say. He felt inefficient and dejected, almost
desperate.

Clark himself, not willing to cast responsibility upon a subordinate,
made ready to give the fatal order. Turning to Long-Hair first, he
demanded of him as well as he could in the Indian dialect of which he
had a smattering, what he had to say at his last moment.

The Indian straightened his already upright form, and, by a strong
bulging of his muscles, snapped the thongs that bound him. Evidently he
had not tried thus to free himself; it was rather a spasmodic
expression of savage dignity and pride. One arm and both his legs still
were part