“My firmness is given me from above.  I can bear my torments, Simon Girty, for they’re arthly, and will soon be over; but yourn—­who’ll say what yourn’ll be, when you come to answer afore Almighty God for this and other crimes!  But that arn’t for the like o’ me to speak of now.  I’m a dying man, and trust soon to be in a better world.  Ef I ever did you wrong, Simon Girty, I don’t remember it now; and I’m very sartin I never did nothing to merit this.  You came to my house, and war treated to the best I had, and here am I in return for’t.  Howsomever, the reckoning’s got to come yit atween you and your God; and so I leave you—­farewell.”

“But say,” returned Girty, who now seemed greatly moved by the manner and tone of Younker:  “But say, old man, that you forgive me, and I will own that I did you wrong.”

“I don’t know’s I’ve any enemies, except these round here,” replied the other, feebly, “and I’d like to die at peace with all the world; but what you ax, Simon Girty, I can’t grant; it’s agin my nater and conscience; I can’t say I forgive ye, for what you’ve done, for I don’t.  I may be wrong—­it may not be Christian like—­but ef it’s a sin, it’s one I’ve got to answer for myself.  No, Girty, I can’t forgive—­pre’aps God will—­you must look to him:  I can’t.  Girty, I can’t; and so, farewell forever!  God be merciful to me a sinner,” he added, looking upward devoutly; “and ef I’ve done wrong, oh! pardon me, for Christ’s sake!”

With these words, the lips of Younker were sealed forever.

Girty stood and gazed upon him in silence, for a few minutes, as one whose mind is ill at ease, and then walked slowly away, in a mood of deep abstraction.  Younker continued alive some three-quarters of an hour longer—­bearing his tortures with great fortitude—­and then sunk down with a groan and expired.  The Indians then proceeded to scalp him; after which they gradually dispersed, with the apparent satisfaction of wolves that have gorged their fill on some sheep-fold.

When Algernon’s guards returned, they found him in a swooning state, as previously recorded; and fearful that his life might be lost, and another day’s sport thus spoiled, they immediately called in their great medicine man, who at once set about bandaging his wound, and applying to it such healing remedies as were known by him to be speedily efficacious, and for which the Indians are proverbially remarkable.  His bruises were also rubbed with a soothing liquid; and by noon of the day following, he had gained sufficient strength to start upon his journey, accompanied by his guards.

On that journey we shall now leave him, and turn to other, and more important events; merely remarking, by the way, lest the reader should consider the neglect an oversight, that, on entering the Piqua village, Oshasqua had taken care to render the life of little Rosetta Millbanks safe, and had secured to her as much comfort as circumstances would permit.