ter than his humanity. But it is really his tender
heart. Some day when you know him better you will find his heart as
tender as I have always found it."

He, knowing what was in her loving heart, could not meet her gaze, and
hastily looked away gazing across the river. His thoughts swiftly
followed his eyes, for he would not have been the man that he was, could
even this great new love which was now filling his heart, and was to
fill all his future life, have made him forget his old love for this
great new state, and the awful crises through which it was passing.

For that was a time of great stress, of deep anxiety, and of almost
intolerable suspense. Those early days and nights of November in the
year eighteen hundred and eleven, were indeed among the most stressful
in the whole stormy history of Kentucky. And through her--since her fate
was to be the fate of the Empire of the West--they were as portentous as
any that the nation has ever known. On that very day in truth, and not
very far off, there had already been enacted one of the mightiest events
that went to the shaping of the national destiny. Over the river on the
banks of its tributary, the Wabash, the battle of Tippecanoe had been
fought and won between the darkness and daylight of that gloomy seventh
of November. The young doctor, like all the people of the country, knew
that the long-dreaded hour had struck, that this last decisive struggle
between the white race and the red must be close at hand; but neither he
nor any one in that region knew that it was already ended. There had not
been a single sign or sound to tell when the conflict was actually going
on. It was said that the roar of the cannon was heard much farther away,
as far even as Monk's Mound, where the Trappists--those most ill-fated
of Kentucky pioneers--had found temporary refuge. But if this be true,
it must have been by reason of the fact that sound carries very far over
vast level prairies, when it cannot cross a much shorter distance which
rises in hills covered with forests, such as shut out every echo of the
battle from Cedar House.

Paul Colbert got up suddenly and began to walk the room, though he
staggered from weakness. He could not sit still under the torture of
such suspense, when he thought of all that was at stake on the outcome
of the conflict which might even then be waging beyond those spectral
trees. The safety of the people living along the river, their homes,
their live