strong hand tenderly on the
girl's head. Then, taking her hand, he led her gently aside, and spoke
to her in her own tongue.

There was something so unexpectedly soft in the scout's voice, and so
tender in his touch, that the little brown maid was irresistibly
comforted. When one falls into the grasp of Goodness and Strength,
relief of mind, more or less, is an inevitable result. David thought so
when he said, "Let me fall now into the hand of the Lord." The Indian
child evidently thought so when she felt that Hunky Ben was strong and
perceived that he was good.

"We will not hurt you, my little one," said the scout, when he had
reached a retired part of the copse, and, sitting down, placed the child
on his knee. "The white man who was killed by your people was a very
bad man. We were looking for him to kill him. Was it the old man that
killed him?"

"No," replied the child, "it was the chief."

"Why was he so cruel in his killing?" asked the scout.

"Because the white man was a coward. He feared to face our warriors,
but he shot an old woman!" answered the little maid; and then, inspired
with confidence by the scout's kind and pitiful expression, she related
the whole story of the savage and wanton murder perpetrated by the
Flint, the subsequent vengeance of her people, and the unchecked flight
and dispersion of Jake's comrades. The old woman who had been slain,
she said, was her grandmother, and the old man who had been captured was
her grandfather.

"Friends, our business has been done for us," said the scout on
rejoining his comrades, "so we've nothing to do but return home."

He then told them in detail what the Indian girl had related.

"Of course," he added, "we've no right to find fault wi' the Redskins
for punishin' the murderer arter their own fashion, though we might wish
they had bin somewhat more merciful--"

"No, we mightn't," interrupted Crux stoutly. "The Flint got off easy in
_my_ opinion. If I had had the doin' o't, I'd have roasted him alive."

"No, you wouldn't, Crux," returned Ben, with a benignant smile. "Young
chaps like you are always, accordin' to your own showin', worse than the
devil himself when your blood's roused by indignation at cruelty or
injustice, but you sing a good deal softer when you come to the scratch
with your enemy in your power."

"You're wrong, Hunky Ben," retorted Crux firmly. "Any man as would blow
the brains out of a poor old woman in cold blood,