“Not when the guilty are abroad, with deeds of death, and friends exposed,” returned Ella, bitterly.

“Ah! true—­true!” rejoined Girty, again looking toward the fire, in a musing mood.

“Well may you muse and writhe under the tortures of your guilty acts,” continued Ella, in the same bitter tone; “for you have much to answer for, Simon Girty.”

“And who told you the past tortured me?” cried Girty, quickly, turning on her a fierce expression.

“Your changing features and guilty starts,” answered Ella.

“Ha! then you have been a spy upon me, have you?” said Girty, pressing the words slowly through his clenched teeth, knitting his shaggy brows, and fixing his eye with intensity upon hers, until she quailed and trembled beneath its seeming fiery glance; which the light, whereby it was seen, rendered more demon-like than usual; while it made shadow chase shadow, like waves of the sea, across his face:  “You have been a spy upon my actions, eh?  Beware!  Ella Barnwell—­beware!  Do not put your head in the lion’s mouth too often, or he may think the bait troublesome; and by ——! had other than you told me what I just now heard, he or she had not lived to repeat it.”

“Far better an early death and innocence, than a long life of guilt and misery,” returned Ella, at once regaining her boldness of speech; “Far better the fate you speak of, than mine.”

“And would you prefer being wedded to death, rather than me?” asked Girty, quickly, in surprise.

“Ay, a thousand times!” replied Ella, energetically, rising as she spoke, into a sitting posture, and looking fearlessly upon the renegade, her previously pale features now flushed with excitement.  “I fear not death, Simon Girty; I have done no act that should make me fear the change that all must sooner or later undergo; but I could not join my hand to that of a man of blood, without loathing and horror, and feeling criminal in the sight of God and man; and least of all to you, Simon Girty, whose name has become a word of terror to the weak and innocent of my race, and whose deeds of late have been such as to make me join my voice in the general maledictions called down upon you.”

During this speech of Ella, Girty sat and gazed upon her with the look of a baffled demon; and, as she concluded, fairly hissed through his teeth: 

“And so you would prefer death to me, eh?  By ——! you shall have your choice!”

As he spoke, he grasped Ella by the wrist with one hand, seized his tomahawk with the other, and sprung upon his feet.  His rapid movement and wild manner now really frightened her; and uttering a faint cry of horror, she endeavored to release his hold; while the warriors, aroused by the noise, bounded up from the earth, weapon in hand, with looks of alarm.

Turning to them, Girty now spoke a few words in the Indian tongue; and, with significant glances at Ella, they were just in the act of again encamping, when crack went some five or six rifles, followed by yells little less savage than their own, and four of them rolled upon the earth, groaning with pain; while the others, surprised and bewildered, grasped their weapons and shouted: