eared with the cricket; but it was a bass or
a pike, not a trout. Wetzel had said there were a few trout living
near the cool springs of these streams. The lad tried again to coax
one to the surface. This time the more fortunate cricket swam and
hopped across the stream to safety.

When Joe's eyes were thoroughly accustomed to the clear water, with
its deceiving lights and shades, he saw a fish lying snug under the
side of a stone. The lad thought he recognized the snub-nose, the
hooked, wolfish jaw, but he could not get sufficient of a view to
classify him. He crawled to a more advantageous position farther
down stream, and then he peered again through the woods. Yes, sure
enough, he had espied a trout. He well knew those spotted silver
sides, that broad, square tail. Such a monster! In his admiration
for the fellow, and his wish for a hook and line to try conclusions
with him, Joe momentarily forgot his object. Remembering, he tossed
out a big, fat cricket, which alighted on the water just above the
fish. The trout never moved, nor even blinked. The lad tried again,
with no better success. The fish would not rise. Thereupon Joe
returned to the point where he had left Wetzel.

"I couldn't see nothin' over there," said the hunter, who was
waiting. "Did you see any?'

"One, and a big fellow."

"Did he see you?"

"No."

"Did he rise to a bug?"

"No, he didn't; but then maybe he wasn't hungry" answered Joe, who
could not understand what Wetzel was driving at.

"Tell me exactly what he did."

"That's just the trouble; he didn't do anything," replied Joe,
thoughtfully. "He just lay low, stifflike, under a stone. He never
batted an eye. But his side-fins quivered like an aspen leaf."

"Them side-fins tell us the story. Girty, an' his redskins hev took
this branch," said Wetzel, positively. "The other leads to the Huron
towns. Girty's got a place near the Delaware camp somewheres. I've
tried to find it a good many times. He's took more'n one white lass
there, an' nobody ever seen her agin."

"Fiend! To think of a white woman, maybe a girl like Nell Wells, at
the mercy of those red devils!"

"Young fellar, don't go wrong. I'll allow Injuns is bad enough; but
I never hearn tell of one abusin' a white woman, as mayhap you mean.
Injuns marry white women sometimes; kill an' scalp 'em often, but
that's all. It's men of our own color, renegades like this Girty, as
do worse'n murder."

Here was the amazing circumsta