blood had tinged it red.

A dog came bounding into the glade. He leaped the brook, hesitated
on the bank, and lowered his nose to sniff at the water. He bounded
up the bank to the cavern.

A long, mournful howl broke the wilderness's quiet.

Another hour passed. The birds were silent; the insects still. The
sun sank behind the trees, and the shades of evening gathered.

The ferns on the other side of the glade trembled. A slight rustle
of dead leaves disturbed the stillness. The dog whined, then barked.
The tall form of a hunter rose out of the thicket, and stepped into
the glade with his eyes bent upon moccasin tracks in the soft moss.

The trail he had been following led him to this bloody spring.

"I might hev knowed it," he muttered.

Wetzel, for it was he, leaned upon his long rifle while his keen
eyes took in the details of the tragedy. The whining dog, the bloody
water, the motionless figures lying in a last embrace, told the sad
story.

"Joe an' Winds," he muttered.

Only a moment did he remain lost in sad reflection. A familiar
moccasin-print in the sand on the bank pointed westward. He examined
it carefully.

"Two hours gone," he muttered. "I might overtake him."

Then his motions became swift. With two blows of his tomahawk he
secured a long piece of grapevine. He took a heavy stone from the
bed of the brook. He carried Joe to the spring, and, returning for
Winds, placed her beside her lover. This done, he tied one end of
the grapevine around the stone, and wound the other about the dead
bodies.

He pushed them off the bank into the spring. As the lovers sank into
the deep pool they turned, exposing first Winds' sad face, and then
Joe's. Then they sank out of sight. Little waves splashed on the
shore of the pool; the ripple disappeared, and the surface of the
spring became tranquil.

Wetzel stood one moment over the watery grave of the maiden who had
saved him, and the boy who had loved him. In the gathering gloom his
stalwart form assumed gigantic proportions, and when he raised his
long arm and shook his clenched fist toward the west, he resembled a
magnificent statue of dark menace.

With a single bound he cleared the pool, and then sped out of the
glade. He urged the dog on Girty's trail, and followed the eager
beast toward the west. As he disappeared, a long, low sound like the
sigh of the night wind swelled and moaned through the gloom.

Chapter XXIV.

When the first ruddy rays