His fierce impetuosity took him a step too far.  The hunter’s arms and waist were fastened, but his feet were free.  His powerful leg was raised suddenly; his foot struck Girty in the pit of the stomach.  The renegade dropped limp and gasping.  The braves carried him away, his gaudy feathers trailing, his long arms hanging inertly, and his face distorted with agony.

The maidens of the tribe, however, showed for the prisoner an interest that had in it something of veiled sympathy.  Indian girls were always fascinated by white men.  Many records of Indian maidens’ kindness, of love, of heroism for white prisoners brighten the dark pages of frontier history.  These girls walked past the hunter, averting their eyes when within his range of vision, but stealing many a sidelong glance at his impressive face and noble proportions.  One of them, particularly, attracted the hunter’s eye.

This was because, as she came by with her companions, while they all turned away, she looked at him with her soft, dark eyes.  She was a young girl, whose delicate beauty bloomed fresh and sweet as that of a wild rose.  Her costume, fringed, beaded, and exquisitely wrought with fanciful design, betrayed her rank, she was Wingenund’s daughter.  The hunter had seen her when she was a child, and he recognized her now.  He knew that the beauty of Aola, of Whispering Winds Among the Leaves, had been sung from the Ohio to the Great Lakes.

Often she passed him that afternoon.  At sunset, as the braves untied him and led him away, he once more caught the full, intense gaze of her lovely eyes.

That night as he lay securely bound in the corner of a lodge, and the long hours wore slowly away, he strained at his stout bonds, and in his mind revolved different plans of escape.  It was not in this man’s nature to despair; while he had life he would fight.  From time to time he expanded his muscles, striving to loosen the wet buckskin thongs.

The dark hours slowly passed, no sound coming to him save the distant bark of a dog and the monotonous tread of his guard; a dim grayness pervaded the lodge.  Dawn was close at hand—­his hour was nearly come.

Suddenly his hearing, trained to a most acute sensibility, caught a faint sound, almost inaudible.  It came from without on the other side of the lodge.  There it was again, a slight tearing sound, such as is caused by a knife when it cuts through soft material.

Some one was slitting the wall of the lodge.

The hunter rolled noiselessly over and over until he lay against the skins.  In the dim grayness he saw a bright blade moving carefully upward through the deer-hide.  Then a long knife was pushed into the opening; a small, brown hand grasped the hilt.  Another little hand followed and felt of the wall and floor, reaching out with groping fingers.

The, hunter rolled again so that his back was against the wall and his wrists in front of the opening.  He felt the little hand on his arm; then it slipped down to his wrists.  The contact of cold steel set a tremor of joy through his heart.  The pressure of his bonds relaxed, ceased; his arms were free.  He turned to find the long-bladed knife on the ground.  The little hands were gone.