before the outlaw, looking into
his repulsive face as if seeking a gleam of hope.

"Oh, it is you?" he said. "Well, well, I haven't seen you for a mighty
long time, but I have heard of you," and his brow darkened.

"What has the White Whirlwind heard of Areotha?" the girl asked with
childish artlessness, and she came very close to the man from whom many
of her sex would turn with loathing.

"Why, they say that you have been spying for Mad Anthony Wayne," he
said, trying to catch the change of color on her face; but he failed,
for none came. "If this is true, a bullet will find your heart some of
these days, for I am an Indian as much as I am a white, and you must not
spy against us. I am your father, but I cannot see how you came to love
the accursed people who hunt me like wolves."

He was speaking with much bitterness, and for a moment it seemed that
Little Moccasin would forswear the Americans, and cleave to him. But
that were impossible; the lamb cannot espouse the wolf's cause.

"My father, why do you fight the people whose skin is white?" she said,
after a minute's silence. "You must have had a bad heart a long time,
for when we lived in the land of the Miami's, you scalped and burned as
you do now. Little Moccasin loves you, but she loves all her white
skinned people--but some better than others."

The flush that came to the girl's cheeks as she finished the last
sentence did not escape Girty's lightning glance.

"I suppose you have tumbled into love with some graceless fellow--some
one who would shoot me just to marry an orphan. I know that you don't go
to the fort enough to fall in love with the British officers, and I'll
be hanged if you shall tie yourself to an American. This will never do,
girl."

Her eyes fell guiltily before his flashing look, and when she looked up
again it was with an altered mien.

"Areotha will hear her father if he will tell her one thing," she said.

"I'll tell you a dozen if I can," he replied. "Bless me, girl, if Jim
Girty, bad as he is, doesn't think a mighty sight of you."

He stooped, and his brawny arm swung around her waist. She did not
struggle, and he looked into her eyes. The lion seemed to be making love
to the gazelle.

"My father, long ago the bullet of the white man struck you down," she
said. "But you ran here and fell as the wild deer falls, in the brake
beyond the hunter's pursuit. Long you lay here; your head was wild and
you said many things when the