Even as the imploring voice ceased a heavy thump sounded on the door.

“Who’s there?” demanded Heckewelder.

Thump!  Thump!

The heavy blows shook the cabin.  The pans rattled on the shelves.  No answer came from without.

“Quick!  Hide Benny!  It’s as much as our lives are worth to have him found here,” cried Heckewelder in a fierce whisper, as he darted toward the door.

“All right, all right, in a moment,” he called out, fumbling over the bar.

He opened the door a moment later and when Jim Girty and Deering entered he turned to his friends with a dread uncertainty in his haggard face.

Edwards lay on the bed with wide-open eyes staring at the intruders.  Mr. Wells sat with bowed head.  Zeisberger calmly whittled a stick, and Jim stood bolt upright, with a hard light in his eyes.

Nell leaned against the side of a heavy table.  Wonderful was the change that had transformed her from a timid, appealing, fear-agonized girl to a woman whose only evidence of unusual excitement were the flame in her eyes and the peculiar whiteness of her face.

Benny was gone!

Heckewelder’s glance returned to the visitors.  He thought he had never seen such brutal, hideous men.

“Wal, I reckon a preacher ain’t agoin’ to lie.  Hev you seen any Injun Christians round here?” asked Girty, waving a heavy sledge-hammer.

“Girty, we have hidden no Indians here,” answered Heckewelder, calmly.

“Wal, we’ll hev a look, anyway,” answered the renegade.

Girty surveyed the room with wolfish eyes.  Deering was so drunk that he staggered.  Both men, in fact, reeked with the vile fumes of rum.  Without another word they proceeded to examine the room, by looking into every box, behind a stone oven, and in the cupboard.  They drew the bedclothes from the bed, and with a kick demolished a pile of stove wood.  Then the ruffians passed into the other apartments, where they could be heard making thorough search.  At length both returned to the large room, when Girty directed Deering to climb a ladder leading to the loft, but because Deering was too much under the influence of liquor to do so, he had to go himself.  He rummaged around up there for a few minutes, and then came down.

“Wal, I reckon you wasn’t lyin’ about it,” said Girty, with his ghastly leer.

He and his companion started to go out.  Deering had stood with bloodshot eyes fixed on Nell while Girty searched the loft, and as they passed the girl on their way to the open air, the renegade looked at Girty as he motioned with his head toward her.  His besotted face expressed some terrible meaning.

Girty had looked at Nell when he first entered, but had not glanced twice at her.  As he turned now, before going out of the door, he fixed on her his baleful glance.  His aspect was more full of meaning than could have been any words.  A horrible power, of which he was boastfully conscious, shone from his little, pointed eyes.  His mere presence was deadly.  Plainly as if he had spoken was the significance of his long gaze.  Any one could have translated that look.