this changed man.

"Come, we'll go," said Jonathan Zane. "I'll guide you to Fort
Henry." He lifted the pack, and led Nell and Jim out of the glade.

They looked back once to picture forever in their minds the lovely
spot with its ghastly quiet bodies, the dark, haunting spring, the
renegade nailed to the tree, and the tall figure of Wetzel as he
watched his shadow on the ground.

* * *

When Wetzel also had gone, only two living creatures remained in the
glade--the doomed renegade, and the white dog. The gaunt beast
watched the man with hungry, mad eyes.

A long moan wailed through the forest. It swelled mournfully on the
air, and died away. The doomed man heard it. He raised his ghastly
face; his dulled senses seemed to revive. He gazed at the stiffening
bodies of the Indians, at the gory corpse of Deering, at the savage
eyes of the dog.

Suddenly life seemed to surge strong within him.

"Hell's fire! I'm not done fer yet," he gasped. "This damned knife
can't kill me; I'll pull it out."

He worked at the heavy knife hilt. Awful curses passed his lips, but
the blade did not move. Retribution had spoken his doom.

Suddenly he saw a dark shadow moving along the sunlit ground. It
swept past him. He looked up to see a great bird with wide wings
sailing far above. He saw another still higher, and then a third. He
looked at the hilltop. The quiet, black birds had taken wing. They
were floating slowly, majestically upward. He watched their graceful
flight. How easily they swooped in wide circles. He remembered that
they had fascinated him when a boy, long, long ago, when he had a
home. Where was that home? He had one once. Ah! the long, cruel
years have rolled back. A youth blotted out by evil returned. He saw
a little cottage, he saw the old Virginia homestead, he saw his
brothers and his mother.

"Ah-h!" A cruel agony tore his heart. He leaned hard against the
knife. With the pain the present returned, but the past remained.
All his youth, all his manhood flashed before him. The long, bloody,
merciless years faced him, and his crimes crushed upon him with
awful might.

Suddenly a rushing sound startled him. He saw a great bird swoop
down and graze the tree tops. Another followed, and another, and
then a flock of them. He saw their gray, spotted breasts and hooked
beaks.

"Buzzards," he muttered, darkly eyeing the dead savages. The carrion
birds were swooping to their feast.

"By