Young had aged perceptibly in these last few days.  The blue veins showed at his temples; his face had become thinner and paler, his eyes had a look of pain.  The former expression of patience, which had sat so well on him, was gone.

“George, I can’t account for my fancies or feelings, else, perhaps, I’d be easier in mind,” answered Dave.  His face, too, showed the ravages of grief.  “I’ve had queer thoughts lately, and dreams such as I never had before.  Perhaps it’s this trouble which has made me so nervous.  I don’t seem able to pull myself together.  I can neither preach nor work.”

“Neither can I!  This trouble has hit you as hard as it has me.  But, Dave, we’ve still our duty.  To endure, to endure—­that is our life.  Because a beam of sunshine brightened, for a brief time, the gray of our lives, and then faded away, we must not shirk nor grow sour and discontented.”

“But how cruel is this border life!”

“Nature itself is brutal.”

“Yes, I know, and we have elected to spend our lives here in the midst of this ceaseless strife, to fare poorly, to have no pleasure, never to feel the comfort of a woman’s smiles, nor the joy of a child’s caress, all because out in the woods are ten or twenty or a hundred savages we may convert.”

“That is why, and it is enough.  It is hard to give up the women you love to a black-souled renegade, but that is not for my thought.  What kills me is the horror for her—­for her.”

“I, too, suffer with that thought; more than that, I am morbid and depressed.  I feel as if some calamity awaited us here.  I have never been superstitious, nor have I had presentiments, but of late there are strange fears in my mind.”

At this juncture Mr. Wells and Heckewelder came out of the adjoining cabin.

“I had word from a trustworthy runner to-day.  Girty and his captives have not been seen in the Delaware towns,” said Heckewelder.

“It is most unlikely that he will take them to the towns,” replied Edwards.  “What do you make of his capturing Jim?”

“For Pipe, perhaps.  The Delaware Wolf is snapping his teeth.  Pipe is particularly opposed to Christianity, and—­what’s that?”

A low whistle from the bushes near the creek bank attracted the attention of all.  The younger men got up to investigate, but Heckewelder detained them.

“Wait,” he added.  “There is no telling what that signal may mean.”

They waited with breathless interest.  Presently the whistle was repeated, and an instant later the tall figure of a man stepped from behind a thicket.  He was a white man, but not recognizable at that distance, even if a friend.  The stranger waved his hand as if asking them to be cautious, and come to him.

They went toward the thicket, and when within a few paces of the man Mr. Wells exclaimed: 

“It’s the man who guided my party to the village.  It is Wetzel!”