heir exhausted bodies and nurse their
wounds. Neither tribe daring to invite a battle after that, hostilities
were stopped, but some time later the young captain met the girl of his
heart on the shore, and before the amazon could prepare for either fight
or flight he had caught her in his arms. They renewed their oaths of
fidelity, and at the wedding the chief proclaimed eternal peace and
blessed the waters they had met beside, the blessing being potent to this
day.

Another reason for the enchantments that are worked here may be that the
lake is occupied by a demon-fish or serpent that crawls, slimy and
dripping, through the underbrush, whenever it sees two lovers together,
and listens to their words. If the man prove faithless he would best
beware of returning to this place, for the demon is lurking there to
destroy him. This monster imprisons the soul of an Ozark princess who
flung herself into the lake when she learned that the son of the Spanish
governor, who had vowed his love to her, had married a woman of his own
rank and race in New Orleans. So they call the lake Creve Coeur, or
Broken Heart. On the day after the suicide the Ozark chief gathered his
men about him and paddled to the middle of the water, where he solemnly
cursed his daughter in her death, and asked the Great Spirit to confine
her there as a punishment for giving her heart to the treacherous white
man, the enemy of his people. The Great Spirit gave her the form in which
she is occasionally seen, to warn and punish faithless lovers.

HOW THE CRIME WAS REVEALED

In 1853 a Hebrew peddler, whose pack was light and his purse was full,
asked leave to pass the night at the house of Daniel Baker, near Lebanon,
Missouri. The favor was granted, and that was the last seen of Samuel
Moritz; although, when some neighbors shook their heads and wondered how
it was that Baker was so well in funds, there were others who replied
that it was impossible to keep track of peddlers, and that if Moritz
wanted to start on his travels early in the morning, or to return to St.
Louis for goods, it mattered to nobody. On an evening in 1860 when there
was a mist in the gullies and a new moon hung in the west, Rev. Mr.
Cummings, a clergyman of that region, was driving home, and as he came to
a bridge near "old man" Baker's farm he saw a man standing on it, with a
pack on his back and a stick in his hand, who was staring intently at
something beneath the bridge. The cler