lintered ash, and with little
appreciation of the fearful shadow that rested upon all, soon sank into
unconsciousness. The mothers were so nervous and unstrung that though
they occasionally shut their eyes, the slumber was fitful and brief.

But among all the party there was none more alert than Agnes Altman. She
had not yet quite forgiven herself for her weakness in showing mercy to
the imprisoned Panther the night before, when he came within a hair of
slaying her beloved George Ashbridge, and, without hinting her intention
to any one, she determined that, with the help of heaven, she would do
something to erase that criminal imprudence, as she viewed it, on her
part.

It may have been this resolution, supplemented by her own consummate
faculties of sight and vision, or, more properly, it was both, that
brought to her a knowledge of peril before it was suspected by any one
of the rangers, or even by George Ashbridge, who, as may be said, was at
her elbow.

Agnes was seated on the leaves, the same as her mother, and with her
back resting against a boulder, which rose a few inches above her head.
In this posture she closed her eyes. They could be of no use to her, and
by shutting them she was able to concentrate her faculties into the
single one of listening; upon that alone she now placed her dependence.

And seated thus, and listening with absorbing intensity, she speedily
became aware of a startling fact; some one was directly on the other
side of the boulder, and separated by no more than three feet from her.

That that some one was a Shawanoe Indian was as certain as that her name
was Agnes Altman.

CHAPTER XII.

CARRYING THE WAR INTO AFRICA.

Jethro Juggens, the brawny servant of Mr. Altman, the dusky youth with
the strength of a Hercules, the intellect of a child, or a skill in the
use of the rifle hardly second to that of Kenton and Boone, has a
singular but momentous part to play in the incidents that follow. The
reader must, therefore, bear with us when now and then we turn aside
from the graver and more tragical sweep of incidents to follow the
doings and the fortunes and misfortunes of the one who rendered such
signal service to his friends, already related in "Shod with Silence."

Simon Kenton denounced himself times without number for bringing Jethro
with him when he set out to recover the canoe that had been left at the
clearing; and yet that act, ill-advised as it seemed, changed the who