gate, searching the ground with her eyes. Of
course she did not find the locket. It was miles and miles away close
to the heart of her lover. If she could but have known this, it would
have comforted her. Beverley had intended to leave it with Jean, but in
his haste and excitement he forgot; writing the note distracted his
attention; and so he bore Alice's picture on his breast and in his
heart while pursuing his long and perilous journey.

Four of Hamilton's scouts came upon Beverley twenty miles south of
Vincennes, but having the advantage of them, he killed two almost
immediately, and after a running fight, the other two attempted escape
in a canoe on the Wabash. Here, firing from a bluff, he wounded a
third. Both then plunged head-foremost into the water, and by keeping
below the surface, got away. The adventure gave Beverley new spirit and
self-reliance; he felt that he could accomplish anything necessary to
his undertaking. In the captured pirogue he crossed the river, and, to
make his trail hard to find, sent the little craft adrift down the
current.

Then alone, in the dead of winter, he took his bearings and struck
across the dreary, houseless plain toward St. Louis.

As soon as Hamilton's discomfited scouts reported to him, he sent
Long-Hair with twenty picked savages, armed and supplied for continuous
and rapid marching, in pursuit of Beverley. There was a large reward
for bringing him in alive, a smaller one for his scalp.

When Alice heard of all this, her buoyant and happy nature seemed
entirely to desert her for a time. She was proud to find out that
Beverley had shown himself brave and capable; it touched her love of
heroism; but she knew too much about Indian warfare to hope that he
could hold his own against Long-Hair, the wiliest and boldest of
scalp-hunters, and twenty of the most experienced braves in Hamilton's
forces. He would almost certainly be killed and scalped, or captured
and brought back to be shot or hanged in Vincennes. The thought chilled
and curdled her blood.

Both Helm and Father Beret tried to encourage and comfort her by
representing the probabilities in the fairest light.

"It's like hunting for a needle in a haystack, going out to find a man
in that wilderness," said Helm with optimistic cheerfulness; "and
besides Beverley is no easy dose for twenty red niggers to take. I've
seen him tried at worse odds than that, and he got out with a whole
skin, too. Don't you fret about