two days as you say, but that you
will have to prove, and we are waiting for you to prove it."

"You mean, then," said Girty, "that we're to have your scalps?"

"Major," said Henry earnestly, "let me speak to them. I've lived among
the Indians, as I told you before, and I know their ways and customs.
What I say may do us a little good!"

"I believe in you, my boy," said Major Braithwaite with confidence.
"Speak as you please, and as long as you please."

He stepped from the high point of the ledge, and Henry promptly took his
place. Braxton Wyatt uttered a cry of surprise and anger as the figure
of the great youth rose above the palisade, and it was repeated by Simon
Girty. The two knew instinctively who had put Fort Prescott on guard,
and their hearts were filled with black rage.

"Simon Girty," called Henry in the language of the Shawnees, which he
spoke well, "do you know me?"

He had deliberately chosen the Shawnee tongue because he was sure that
all the chiefs understood it, and he wished them to hear what he would
have to say.

"Yes, I know you," said Girty angrily, "and I know why you are here."

Henry suddenly put on the manner of an Indian orator. He had learned
well from them when he was a captive in the Northwestern tribe, and for
the moment the half-taunting, half-boastful spirit which he wished to
show really entered into his being.

"Simon Girty," he called loudly, "I came here to save these people and
to defeat you, and I have succeeded. You cannot take this fort and you
cannot frighten its men to surrender it. Renegade, murderer of your
kind, wretch, liar, I know and these people know that if they were to
surrender you would not keep your word if you could. How can any one
believe a traitor? How can your Indian allies believe that the man who
murders his own people would not murder them when the time came?"

Girty's face flamed with furious red, but Henry went on rapidly:

"If Manitou told me that I should fall in fair fight with a Wyandot or a
Shawnee or a Miami I should not feel disgraced, but if I were to be
killed by the dirty hand of you, Girty, or the equally dirty hand of
Braxton Wyatt, who stands behind you, I should feel myself dishonored as
long as the world lasts."

Girty, choking with rage, drew his tomahawk from his belt and shook it
at Henry, who was more than a hundred yards away. The chiefs remained
motionless, silent and majestic as before.

"And you great chiefs," continu