ur child is dead!"

And with a piteous moan, the poor heart swooned away. Kind hands stayed
her fall, and taking her up and bearing her into the fort, there laid
her on a bed in grandpap's house. The same kind hands took the boy,
whom, up to this moment, the father had held tenderly clasped to his
rugged breast; took and laid him beside his senseless mother, his
garments all torn to tatters and red with blood, which still trickled
from many a wound.

"After all, the child may not be dead," said a kind voice--young Ben
Logan's mother. "See how he bleeds." And she laid her hand upon the
unheaving breast, in the forlorn hope of finding the heart still
beating. Then, after a moment of suspense, came the joyful announcement:
"It beats! It beats! The child still lives!"

The cry aroused the mother to consciousness. Clasping her child to her
bosom, in an agony of pitying love and hopeless sorrow, again and again
she cried: "Oh! God of Love! But our child is dead!"

"No, Elster, dear, your darling is not dead," said another kind
voice--little Bertha Bryant's mother. "Give him to us and we will wash
and lave his wounds and bind them up with healing salves. See how freely
they bleed. That could not be the case if he were dead."

She suffered them to take him and do with him as they would; for
herself, she still believed him dead. At the end of half an hour Jervis,
who had gone with the women to assist in the work of resuscitation,
returned to her and bade her be of good cheer; that the wounds, though
many and grievous enough, did not seem to be deep and dangerous, and the
signs of reviving life were growing every moment more and more apparent.
Thus reassured, Elster arose, and from that time forward performed her
part as beseemed the mother of the sufferer.

CHAPTER XIX.

Young Ben Logan.

That morning, when the quest had begun, foremost of all the questers had
gone forth young Ben Logan. Throughout the anxious day no one, saving
the father of the lost boy, had shown such unremitting, unwearied
diligence in the search as Ben, and that he had desisted at all was
because the gathering shadows of evening had rendered further efforts
unavailing.

Young Ben Logan, it will be remembered, was the boy to whom poor Sprigg
had been so eager to make a display of his red moccasins, even while
confident that their glitter and gleam would set his young friend--the
best young friend he had in the world--to dying of envy the m