"Wetzel, listen;" his voice was low and shaken with deep feeling. "I
am a teacher of God's word, and I am as earnest in that purpose as
you are in your life-work. I shall die here; I shall fill an
unmarked grave; but I shall have done the best I could. This is the
life destiny has marked out for me, and I will live it as best I
may; but in this moment, preacher as I am, I would give all I have
or hope to have, all the little good I may have done, all my life,
to be such a man as you. For I would avenge the woman I loved. To
torture, to kill Girty! I am only a poor, weak fellow who would be
lost a mile from this village, and if not, would fall before the
youngest brave. But you with your glorious strength, your
incomparable woodcraft, you are the man to kill Girty. Rid the
frontier of this fiend. Kill him! Wetzel, kill him! I beseech you
for the sake of some sweet girl who even now may be on her way to
this terrible country, and who may fall into Girty's power--for her
sake, Wetzel, kill him. Trail him like a bloodhound, and when you
find him remember my broken heart, remember Nell, remember, oh, God!
remember poor Kate!"

Young's voice broke into dry sobs. He had completely exhausted
himself, so that he was forced to lean against the tree for support.

Wetzel spoke never a word. He stretched out his long, brawny arm and
gripped the young missionary's shoulder. His fingers clasped hard.
Simple, without words as the action was, it could not have been more
potent. And then, as he stood, the softer look faded slowly from his
face. A ripple seemed to run over his features, which froze, as it
subsided, into a cold, stone rigidity.

His arm dropped; he stepped past the tree, and, bounding lightly as
a deer, cleared the creek and disappeared in the bushes.

Mr. Wells carried Nell to his cabin where she lay for hours with wan
face and listless languor. She swallowed the nourishing drink an old
Indian nurse forced between her teeth; she even smiled weakly when
the missionaries spoke to her; but she said nothing nor seemed to
rally from her terrible shock. A dark shadow lay always before her,
conscious of nothing present, living over again her frightful
experience. Again she seemed sunk in dull apathy.

"Dave, we're going to loose Nell. She's fading slowly," said George,
one evening, several days after the girl's return. "Wetzel said she
was unharmed, yet she seems to have received a hurt more fatal than
a physical one.