n the door was once more opened and Blake entered with
Nanette.

"By the general's order," said he, in brief explanation, and in an
instant she was on her knees beside the dying Sioux. There and thus they
left them. Waller said there was nothing to be done. The junior surgeon,
Tracy,--he whom she had so fascinated only those few weeks before,--bent
and whispered: "Call me if you need. I shall remain within hearing." But
there came no call. At taps the door was once more softly opened and
Tracy peered within. Fawn Eyes, rocking to and fro, was sobbing in an
abandonment of grief. Nanette, face downward, lay prone upon a stilled
and lifeless heart.

Flint and his escort duly went their way, and spread their story as they
camped at Laramie and "the Chug." The general tarried another week at
Frayne. There was still very much to keep him there; so, not until he
and "Black Bill" came down did we at other stations learn the facts. The
general, as usual, had little to say. The colonel talked for both.

A woful time, it seems, they had had with poor Nanette when at last it
became necessary to take her away from her dead brave. She raged and
raved at even her pleading aunt. Defiant of them all, from the general
down, and reckless of law or fact, she vowed it was all a conspiracy to
murder Moreau in cold blood. They gave him the knife, she declared,
although it later developed that she had tossed it through the open
window. They had given him the chance to escape--the sight of Kennedy,
"who had striven to kill him twice before," and then of the blacksmiths,
with their degrading shackles--all just to tempt him to make a dash for
freedom;--just as they had lured and murdered Crazy Horse--Crazy Horse,
his brave kinsman--not ten years before,--then had placed a dead shot on
the path to life and liberty--a man who killed him in cold blood, as
deliberately planned. These were her accusations, and that story took
strong hold in certain circles in the far East, where "love of truth"
inspired its widespread publication, but not its contradiction when the
facts became known. The same conditions obtain to-day in dealing with
affairs across the sea.

Nanette said many other things before her final breakdown; and Hay and
his sorrowing wife found their load of care far heaviest, for the strain
of Indian blood, now known to all, had steeled the soul of the girl
against the people at Fort Frayne, men and women both--against none so
vehemently