artled her painfully, making her jump like a fawn.

"Little friend not be 'fraid," said a guttural voice in broken French.
"Little friend not make noise."

At a glance she recognized Long-Hair, the Indian, rising out of the
matted marsh growth. It was a hideous vision of embodied cunning,
soullessness and murderous cruelty.

"Not tell white man you see me?" he grunted interrogatively, stepping
close to her. He looked so wicked that she recoiled and lifted her
hands defensively.

She trembled from head to foot, and her voice failed her; but she made
a negative sign and smiled at him, turning as white as her tanned face
could become.

In his left hand he held his bow, while in his right he half lifted a
murderous looking tomahawk.

"What new flag mean?" he demanded, waving the bow's end toward the fort
and bending his head down close to hers. "Who yonder?"

"The great American Father has taken us under his protection," she
explained. "We are big-knives now." It almost choked her to speak.

"Ugh! heap damn fools," he said with a dark scowl. "Little friend much
damn fool."

He straightened up his tall form and stood leering at her for some
seconds, then added:

"Little friend get killed, scalped, maybe."

The indescribable nobility of animal largeness, symmetry and strength
showed in his form and attitude, but the expression of his countenance
was absolutely repulsive--cold, hard, beastly.

He did not speak again, but turned quickly, and stooping low,
disappeared like a great brownish red serpent in the high grass, which
scarcely stirred as he moved through it.

Somehow that day made itself strangely memorable to Alice. She had been
accustomed to stirring scenes and sudden changes of conditions; but
this was the first time that she had ever joined actively in a public
movement of importance. Then, too, Long-Hair's picturesque and rudely
dramatic reappearance affected her imagination with an indescribable
force. Moreover, the pathetic situation in the love affair between Rene
and Adrienne had taken hold of her conscience with a disturbing grip.
But the shadowy sense of impending events, of which she could form no
idea, was behind it all. She had not heard of Brandywine, or Bunker
Hill, or Lexington, or Concord; but something like a waft of their
significance had blown through her mind. A great change was coming into
her idyllic life. She was indistinctly aware of it, as we sometimes are
of an approaching sto