General Lewis was not much pleased with the sudden and apparently causeless change which Governor Dunmore had made in the plan of the expedition.  Nevertheless, he immediately prepared to obey the new orders, and had given directions for the construction of rafts upon which to cross the Ohio, when, before daylight on the morning of the 10th of October, some of the scouts suddenly entered the encampment with the information that an immense body of Indians was just at hand, hastening upon the Point.  This was the force of the brave and skillful chief Cornstalk, whose genius and valor were so conspicuous on that day, throughout the whole of which raged the hardly-contested and moat bloody Battle of the Point.  Girty had fled from General Lewis immediately to the chief Cornstalk, forsworn his white nature, and leagued himself with the Redman forever; and with the Indians he was now advancing, under the cover of night, to surprise the Virginian camp.  At the distance of only a mile from the Point, Cornstalk was met by a detachment of the Virginians, under the command of Colonel Charles Lewis, a brother of the general; and here, about sunrise on the 10th of October, 1774, commenced one of the longest, severest, and bloodiest battles ever fought upon the Western frontiers.  It terminated, as we have seen, about sunset, with the defeat of the Indians it is true, but with a loss to the whites which carried mourning into many a mansion of the Old Dominion, and which was keenly felt throughout the country at the time, and remembered with sorrow long after.

Girty having thrown himself among the Indians, as has been related, and embraced their cause, now retreated with them into the interior of Ohio, and ever after followed their fortunes without swerving.  On arriving at the towns of the Wyandots, he was adopted into that tribe, and established himself at Upper Sandusky.  Being active, of a strong constitution, fearless in the extreme, and at all times ready to join their war parties, lie soon became very popular among his new associates, and a man of much consequence.  He was engaged in most of the expeditions against the frontier settlements of Pennsylvania and Virginia—­always brave and always cruel—­till the year 1778, when occurred an incident which, as it is the only bright spot apparent on the whole dark career of the renegade, shall be related with some particularity.

Girty happened to be at Lower Sandusky this year, when Kenton—­known at that period as Simon Butler—­was brought in to be executed by a party of Indians who had made him a prisoner on the banks of the Ohio.  Years before, Kenton and Girty had been bosom companions at Fort Pitt, and served together subsequently in the commencement of Dunmore’s expedition; but the victim was already blackened for the stake, and the renegade failed to recognize in him his former associate.  Girty had at this time but just returned from an expedition against the frontier of Pennsylvania, which had been