perilous journey, leaving the girl he loved in ignorance
of his real intentions. Who was to tell her that he loved her? Who
was to tell her that it was because his whole heart and soul had
gone to her that he had kissed her?

With bowed head he slowly walked away toward the fort, totally
oblivious of the fact that a young girl, with hands pressed tightly
over her breast to try to still a madly beating heart, watched him
from her window until he disappeared into the shadow of the
block-house.

Alfred paced up and down his room the four remaining hours of that
eventful day. When the light was breaking in at the east and dawn
near at hand he heard the rough voices of men and the tramping of
iron-shod hoofs. The hour of his departure was at hand.

He sat down at his table and by the aid of the dim light from a pine
knot he wrote a hurried letter to Betty. A little hope revived in
his heart as he thought that perhaps all might yet be well. Surely
some one would be up to whom he could intrust the letter, and if no
one he would run over and slip it under the door of Colonel Zane's
house.

In the gray of the early morning Alfred rode out with the daring
band of heavily armed men, all grim and stern, each silent with the
thought of the man who knows he may never return. Soon the
settlement was left far behind.

CHAPTER V.

During the last few days, in which the frost had cracked open the
hickory nuts, and in which the squirrels had been busily collecting
and storing away their supply of nuts for winter use, it had been
Isaac's wont to shoulder his rifle, walk up the hill, and spend the
morning in the grove.

On this crisp autumn morning he had started off as usual, and had
been called back by Col. Zane, who advised him not to wander far
from the settlement. This admonition, kind and brotherly though it
was, annoyed Isaac. Like all the Zanes he had born in him an intense
love for the solitude of the wilderness. There were times when
nothing could satisfy him but the calm of the deep woods.

One of these moods possessed him now. Courageous to a fault and
daring where daring was not always the wiser part, Isaac lacked the
practical sense of the Colonel and the cool judgment of Jonathan.
Impatient of restraint, independent in spirit, and it must be
admitted, in his persistence in doing as he liked instead of what he
ought to do, he resembled Betty more than he did his brothers.

Feeling secure in his ability to take