not want his freedom. I love you, Myeerah. You have
saved me and I am yours. If you will go home with me and marry me
there as my people are married I will go back to the Wyandot
village."

Myeerah's eyes softened with unutterable love. With a quick cry she
was in his arms. After a few moments of forgetfulness Myeerah spoke
to Thundercloud and waved her hand toward the west. The chief swung
himself over his horse, shouted a single command, and rode down the
bank into the water. His warriors followed him, wading their horses
into the shallow creek, with never backward look. When the last
rider had disappeared in the willows the lovers turned their horses
eastward.

CHAPTER X.

It was near the close of a day in early summer. A small group of
persons surrounded Col. Zane where he sat on his doorstep. From time
to time he took the long Indian pipe from his mouth and blew great
clouds of smoke over his head. Major McColloch and Capt. Boggs were
there. Silas Zane half reclined on the grass. The Colonel's wife
stood in the door-way, and Betty sat on the lower step with her head
leaning against her brother's knee. They all had grave faces.
Jonathan Zane had returned that day after an absence of three weeks,
and was now answering the many questions with which he was plied.

"Don't ask me any more and I'll tell you the whole thing," he had
just said, while wiping the perspiration from his brow. His face was
worn; his beard ragged and unkempt; his appearance suggestive of
extreme fatigue. "It was this way: Colonel Crawford had four hundred
and eighty men under him, with Slover and me acting as guides. This
was a large force of men and comprised soldiers from Pitt and the
other forts and settlers from all along the river. You see, Crawford
wanted to crush the Shawnees at one blow. When we reached the
Sandusky River, which we did after an arduous march, not one Indian
did we see. You know Crawford expected to surprise the Shawnee camp,
and when he found it deserted he didn't know what to do. Slover and
I both advised an immediate retreat. Crawford would not listen to
us. I tried to explain to him that ever since the Guadenhutten
massacre keen-eyed Indian scouts had been watching the border. The
news of the present expedition had been carried by fleet runners to
the different Indian tribes and they were working like hives of
angry bees. The deserted Shawnee village meant to me that the alarm
had been sounded in the towns of