man?"

I bowed in silence, astounded by her words and appearance.

"Yet you are not of the garrison,--not of Dearborn. I have never seen
your face before. Yet you are surely a man, and white. Holy Mother!
can it indeed be that you have come to save me?"

"I am here to serve you by every means in my power," I answered
soberly, for the wildness of her speech almost frightened me. "God, I
truly think, must have led me to you."

Her wonderful eyes, questioning, anxious, doubtful, never once left my
face.

"Who are you? How came you here?"

"I am named John Wayland," I replied, striving to speak as simply as
might be, so that she would comprehend, "and form one of a small party
travelling overland from the east toward the Fort. We are encamped
yonder at the edge of the sand. I left the camp an hour ago, and
wandered hither that I might look out upon the waters of the Great
Lake; and here, through the strange providence of God, I have found
you."

She glanced apprehensively backward over her shoulder across the
darkened waters, and her slight form shook.

"Oh, please, take me away from it!" she cried, a note of undisguised
terror in her voice, and her hands held out toward me in a pitiful
gesture of appeal. "Oh, that horrible, cruel water! I have loved it
in the past, but now I hate it; how horribly it has tortured me! Take
me away, I beg,--anywhere, so that I can neither see nor hear it any
more. It has neither heart nor soul." And she hid her face behind the
streaming hair.

"You will trust me, then?" I asked, for I had little knowledge of
women. "You will go with me?"

She flung the clinging locks back from her eyes, with an odd, imperious
gesture which I thought most becoming, holding them in place with one
hand, while extending the other frankly toward me.

"Go with you? Yes," she replied, unhesitatingly. "I have known many
men such as you are, men of the border, and have always felt free to
trust them; they are far more true to helpless womanhood than many a
perfumed cavalier. You have a face that speaks of honor and manliness.
Yes, I will go with you gladly."

I was deeply impressed by her sudden calmness, her rapid repression of
that strange wildness of demeanor that had at first so marked her words
and manner. As I partially lifted her from the boat to the sand, she
staggered heavily, and would have fallen had I not instantly caught her
to me. For a single moment her dark eyes looked