here three or four years and had flourished in peace; freedom
so long from danger had made them careless, but the Shawnee scouts had
looked from the woods upon the settlement, and the war band would slay
or take them all with ease.

The man had not spoken a half dozen words before Henry knew that
Wareville was the place, upon which the doom was so soon to fall. The
chill of horror that had seized him at sight of the yellow-haired scalp
passed over him again, deeper, stronger and longer than before. And the
colony would fall! There could be no doubt of it! Nothing could save it!
The hideous band, raging with tomahawk and knife, would dash without a
word of warning, like a bolt from the sky upon Wareville so long
sheltered and peaceful in its valley. And he could see all the phases of
the savage triumph, the surprise, the triumphant and ferocious yells,
the rapid volleys of the rifles, the flashing of the blades, the burning
buildings, the shouts, the cries, and men, women and children in one red
slaughter. In another year the forest would be springing up where
Wareville had been, and the wolf and the fox would prowl among the
charred timbers. And among the bleaching bones would be those of his own
mother and sister and Lucy Upton--if they were not taken away for a
worse fate.

He endured the keenest thrill of agony that life had yet held for him.
All his old life, the dear familiar ties surged up, and were hot upon
his brain. His place was there! with them! not here! He had yielded too
easily to the spell of the woods and the call of the old primeval
nature. He might have escaped long ago, there had been many
opportunities, but he could not see them. His blindness had been
willful, the child of his own desires. He knew it too well now. He saw
himself guilty and guilty he was.

But in that moment of agony and fear for his own he was paying the price
of his guilt. The sense of helplessness was crushing. In two hours the
war party would start and it would flit southward like the wind, as
silent but far more deadly. No, nothing could save the innocent people
at Wareville; they were as surely doomed as if their destruction had
already taken place.

But not one of these emotions, so tense and so deep, was written on the
face of him whom even the Shawnees did not know to be white. Not a
feature changed, the Indian stoicism and calm, the product alike of his
nature and cultivation, clung to him. His eyes were veiled and his