"I know him," he said, "and he is too vile a being to be worthy to meet
death at your hands. Besides, if he be now released, a lifetime of
blindness will prove even a greater punishment than any you can
inflict. Lead him far out upon the trail, and there leave him. Others
must have accompanied him, and they will doubtless find and care for
their own."

So it was done as Rene had ordered, and on the following day no trace
of the wounded man could be found; but the imprint of other moccasined
feet, near where he had been left, showed that his friends had
discovered and borne him away.

When Rene was afterwards questioned as to who he was, he answered,

"Chitta, the Seminole."

CHAPTER XVIII

THE FRENCH HAVE COME AGAIN

Three years had passed from the time the Spaniards established their
power in this part of the New World, by their fearful massacres of the
French at Fort Caroline and among the sand dunes of the coast, below
San Augustin. They were years of cruelty and injustice on the part of
the Spaniards, and of great suffering to those nations who fell into
their hands; but to the dwellers in the distant land of the Alachuas,
among whom Rene de Veaux had taken up his abode, they were years of
peace, prosperity, and contentment. The little encampment, that the
good chief Micco had established beside the great spring, had grown
into a populous village, surrounded, in all directions, by broad fields
of waving maize and yellow pumpkins, besides an abundance of other
things pleasant and useful. The forests still teemed with game, and
the rivers with fish, and the skill of the Indian hunter was such that
both could be obtained in plenty at all seasons.

In this beautiful land, with every want anticipated, surrounded by
devoted friends, and leading a life of active usefulness, it would seem
as though no man could be unhappy. There was, however, at least one
among its dwellers who was so, and he was their ruler, the chief of
them all, whose word was their law, and whose slightest command they
hastened to obey. They called him Ta-lah-lo-ko (the White Chief),
though in another land he would be known as Rene de Veaux.

It was a great longing to visit once more this other land, the fair
France of his birth, and the apparent impossibility of ever doing so,
that made the white chief unhappy, and caused his people to regard him
sorrowfully, as one troubled by an evil spirit. The old medicine men
of the trib