ff
the boys and squaws, the young warrior Tecumseh, one of the brothers of
the chief I had killed, claimed me for adoption in place of his kinsman.
The other brother, Elskwatawa, promptly seconded Tecumseh. After much
dispute, their claim was allowed, and for three years I lived as a
member of the tribe, always watched against escape, yet treated with
utmost kindness.

"That Fall the leading members of my tribe were present with the braves
of the Miamis, Delawares, Wyandots, Iroquois, and other tribes, who made
a second Braddock's Defeat of their battle with General St. Clair. They
brought back no captives, but such quantities of plunder and such tales
of slaughter that I could hardly credit either my eyes or my ears.

"After this I was taken to the neighborhood of the British fort near the
Maumee Rapids, where the notorious renegade McKee proved that even the
worst of men have their better nature. He sought to ransom me from my
adopted brothers. This was refused, but I was permitted to come and go
freely to the fort. One day, chancing upon a book of physic in the scant
library of the post surgeon, I showed such interest that the portly old
doctor seized upon me as a _protege_.

"Within a year I was forced to return to the Shawnee towns, but with me
I took a Latin grammar and my precious treatise on physic. Again I was
brought to the Maumee, and there placed for safekeeping in the fort
during General Wayne's cautious but steady advance north from Fort
Washington. This meant months more of study under the tuition of my
kindly surgeon; so that upon the day of Wayne's glorious victory at
Fallen Timbers, when he drove the routed warriors of the allied tribes
past the very walls of the fort, I was further advanced in my studies
than many an English schoolboy of seventeen or eighteen, and, I must
confess, fast acquiring British sympathies.

"But the sight of Wayne's victorious cavalry, who rode up defiantly
within pistol-shot of the palisades, roused in me such a feverish desire
to escape that I should have flung myself upon the bayonets of the
sentinels rather than have remained. Fortunately the garrison was so
intent upon the burning of the dwellings and trading establishments
without the fort by our army, that I was able to slip over the stockade
with the aid of a rope, and make off safely in the darkness."

Alisanda sighed her relief of the suspense that had held her tense. "So
you escaped!" she exclaimed.

"To the