for me, Wau-nan-gee,
you will save my husband."

"Spose him love him very much husband?" he said, fixing a penetrating
yet softened look on her.

"Yes, Wau-nan-gee, very much," returned Mrs. Ronayne with emphasis.
"If you save one you must save the other."

Without pursuing the conversation further, it may suffice to remark
that Wau-nan-gee left not Mrs. Ronayne until he had exacted her
promise to meet him on the following afternoon in the summer-house,
when he said he would be enabled to show her a place where, with
her husband, she might be concealed as soon as it was known on what
day the Indians should have decided on their attack. This he pledged
himself to have arranged in the course of the morning, so that by
the afternoon she should be enabled to judge of the convenience it
afforded. The trunks seen by Ronayne at Hardscrabble, were hastily
packed by Mrs. Ronayne with articles of clothing for both, and
conveyed by Wau-nan-gee that night through his secret entrance to
the summer-house, and subsequently removed.

Not liking to call attention to the circumstance of her crossing
the water unaccompanied, and moreover, really desiring the presence
of one of her own sex to sustain her in the course that had been
forced upon her, she had requested Mrs. Headley to bear her company.
On her entering the summer-house, the trap-door, which appeared to
have been made that very morning, was open; but instead of
Wau-nan-gee, she beheld standing near its entrance another dark
Indian whom she had too much reason to fear and dread.

It has already been remarked that Pee-to-tum was not a genuine
Pottowatomie, but one of that race whose very name is a synonym
with treachery and falsehood--a Chippewa. With low, heavy features;
a dark, scowling brow; coarse, long, dark hair, shading the restless,
ever-moving eye that, like that of the serpent, seemed to fascinate
where most the cold and slimy animal sought to sting; the broad,
coarse nose; the skin partaking more in the Chippewa, of that
offensive, rank odor peculiar to the Indian, than any others of
the race; with all these loathsome attributes of person, yet with
a soul swelling with the most unbounded vanity and self-sufficiency,
based on ignorance and assumption; this man, although having a wife
and children grown up, had dared to cast the eye of desire on Mrs.
Ronayne. Long had he watched her, not as the gentle, the pure,
the self-sacrificing Wau-nan-gee, but as a tiger glo