eturned the other gloomily. "He must have gone
with the band of Indians among whose tracks I lost his footsteps."

"Have you any idea who can have done this horrible deed?" said
Pemberton.

"It was Darkeye," said Jasper in a stern voice.

Some of the Indians who chanced to be in the hall were startled, and
rose on hearing this.

"Be not alarmed, friends," said the fur-trader. "You are the guests of
Christian men. We will not punish you for the deeds of another man of
your tribe."

"How does the white man know that this was done by Darkeye?" asked a
chief haughtily.

"I _know_ _it_," said Jasper angrily; "I feel sure of it; but I cannot
prove it--of course. Does Arrowhead agree with me?"

"He does!" replied the Indian, "and there may be proof. Does Jasper
remember the trading store and the _bitten_ _bullet_?"

A gleam of intelligence shot across the countenance of the white hunter
as his comrade said this. "True, Arrowhead, true."

He turned, as he spoke, to the body of his late father-in-law, and
examined the wound. The ball, after passing through the heart, had
lodged in the back, just under the skin.

"See," said he to the Indians, "I will cut out this ball, but before
doing so I will tell how I think it is marked."

He then related the incident in the trading store, with which the reader
is already acquainted, and afterwards extracted the ball, which,
although much flattened and knocked out of shape, showed clearly the
deep marks made by the Indian's teeth. Thus, the act which had been
done slyly but boastfully before the eyes of a comrade, probably as
wicked as himself, became the means whereby Darkeye's guilt was clearly
proved.

At once a party of his own tribe were directed by their chief to go out
in pursuit of the murderer.

It were vain for me to endeavour to describe the anguish of poor Marie
on being deprived of a kind and loving father in so awful and sudden a
manner. I will drop a veil over her grief, which was too deep and
sacred to be intermeddled with.

On the day following the murder, a band of Indians arrived at Fort Erie
with buffalo skins for sale. To the amazement of every one Darkeye
himself was among them. The wily savage--knowing that his attempting to
quit that part of the country as a fugitive would be certain to fix
suspicion on him as the murderer--resolved to face the fur-traders as if
he were ignorant of the deed which had been done. By the very boldness
of t