a sad and downcast look.

"I don't blame you, Paul," he said gently, "for speaking that way when you
don't understand. I'm not a renegade, Paul. I did what I did to save our
lives--yours as well as mine, Paul. The chief, Red Eagle, threatened to
put us both to the most awful tortures at once if I didn't do it."

"Liar, as well as scoundrel and renegade!" exclaimed Paul fiercely.

But Braxton Wyatt went on in his gentle, persuading, unabashed manner:

"It is as true as I stand here. I could not take you, too, Paul, to
torture and death, and all the while I was hoping that the people on the
boat would see, or suspect, and that they would turn back in time. If you
had not cried out--and it was a wonderfully brave thing to do!--I think
that at the last moment I myself should have done so."

"Liar!" said Paul again, and he turned his back to Braxton Wyatt.

Wyatt looked fixedly at the bound boy, shrugged his shoulders a little,
and said:

"I never took you for a fool before, Paul."

But Paul was silent, and Braxton Wyatt went away. An hour or two later Red
Eagle came to Paul, unbound his arms, and gave him something to eat. As
Paul ate the venison, Braxton Wyatt returned to him and said:

"It is my influence with the chief, Paul, that has secured you this good
treatment in spite of their rage against you. It is better to pretend to
fall in with their ways, if we are to retain life, and ever to secure
freedom."

But Paul only turned his back again and remained silent. Yet with the food
and rest the ache died out of his head, and he was permitted to wash off
the blood caused by the heavy blow from the flat of a tomahawk. Then he
crossed the Ohio with the band.

Paul was in a canoe with Red Eagle and two other warriors, and Braxton
Wyatt was in another canoe not far away. But Paul resolutely ignored him,
and looked only at the great river, and the thick forest on either shore.
He was now more lonely than ever, and the Ohio that he was crossing seemed
to him to be the boundary between the known and the unknown. Below it was
Wareville and Marlowe, tiny settlements in the vast surrounding
wilderness, it was true, but the abodes of white people, nevertheless.
North of it, and he was going northward, stretched the forest that savages
alone haunted. The crossing of the river was to Paul like passing over a
great wall that would divide him forever from his own. All his vivid
imagination was alive, and it painted the picture