It was the last day of the convocation, and it had been arranged that a great foot-race should take place on the open ground near the river, between the younger braves and the young men of the settlement.  The race was in full progress, and among the younger men all was mirth, hilarity, and good-natured emulation, while even the older chiefs, catching the spirit of the occasion, had relaxed from their habitual gravity and were cheering on the contestants, when suddenly a musket-shot echoed over the grounds, and one of the young Indians—­a near kinsman of a chief—­fell in his tracks lifeless.  The smoke came from the woods near the race-ground, and pursuit failed to discover the assassin, but he was evidently a white man.

It was as if the shot had been fired into a magazine of gunpowder.  The Indians had come without arms, or there might have followed a bloody tragedy.  As it was, they gathered their blankets about them, and, with threatening gestures and faces presaging a terrible revenge, silently stole away into the forest.

It was afterward learned that the murderer was a man named Crabtree, from the Wolf Hills, now Abingdon, in Virginia.  A brother of his had been killed by the Shawnees a short time before while exploring with Boone in Kentucky, and, lurking in the woods near by, he had taken this inopportune time to wreak a bloody revenge.

The Indians had left hastily, giving no time for explanation or parley.  Revenge—­blood for blood—­was the cardinal doctrine of their theology, and, unless something were done to avert it, war, bloody and exterminating, would soon be upon the white settlers.

But what could be done?  To flee the country was only to invite pursuit; to remain would be to invite a conflict with three thousand infuriated savages.  Hastily they gathered in council; and then it was that Robertson volunteered, like Curtius, to ride into the breach,—­at the peril of his life to visit and endeavor to pacify the Indians.  It was a journey of a hundred and fifty miles through an unbroken forest, and death might lurk behind every bush and tree on the way; but what was one life perilled to save perhaps five hundred?  Thus Robertson reasoned with his friends and neighbors, and then, mounting his horse and giving a parting kiss to his wife and child, he rode off into the wilderness.

EDMUND KIRKE.

* * * * *

DIEU DISPOSE.

Edward Lindsay and his wife were unmistakably favorites of Fortune.  They were happily married, their love for each other being firmly established on a basis of sympathy and respect; they were young and blessed with sound health; they were very popular among their friends, of whom they had many; they were clever, Edward in a literary, his wife in an artistic way; they were prosperous, far beyond the expectations they had formed when, shortly before their marriage, Edward left his position in the Crescent Bank and went into real estate on his own account.  It is hardly to be wondered at that they were regarded with envy by more than a few of their acquaintances in the comfortable city of St. Louis.