A single glance told me who our unwelcome visitor must be.  That giant body, surmounted by the huge broad face, could belong to none other than the Wyandot, Sau-ga-nash,—­him who had spoken for the warriors of this tribe before the torture-stake.  He stood erect and rigid, his stern, questioning eyes upon us, his lips a thin line of repression.  With a quick movement, I thrust the girl behind me, and faced him, motionless, but with every muscle strained for action.  The Indian spoke slowly, and used perfect English.

“Ugh!” he said.  “Who are you?  A prisoner?  Surely you cannot be that same Frenchman we helped entertain last night?”

“I am not the Frenchman,” I answered deliberately, vainly hoping his watchful eyes might wander about the lodge long enough to yield me chance for a spring at his throat, “though I was one of his party.  I only came here to bring comfort to this poor girl.”

“No doubt she needs it,” he replied drily, “and your way is surely a good one.  Yet I doubt if Little Sauk would approve it, and as his friend, I must speak for him in the matter.  Do you say you are also a prisoner?  To what chief?”

“To none,” I answered shortly, resolved now to venture all in a trial of strength.  He read this decision in my eyes, and stepped back warily.  At the same instant Toinette flung her arms restrainingly about my neck.

“Don’t, John!” she urged, using my name thus for the first time; “the savage has a gun hidden beneath his robe!”

I saw the weapon as she spoke, and saw too the angry glint in the fellow’s eye as he thrust the muzzle menacingly forward.  As we stood thus, glaring at each other, a sudden remembrance made me pause.  “Sau-ga-nash"?—­surely it was neither more nor less than a Wyandot expression signifying “Englishman.”  That broad face was not wholly Indian; could this be the half-breed chief of whom I had so often heard?  ’Twas worth the chance to learn.

“You are Sau-ga-nash?” I asked, slowly, Toinette still clinging to me, her face over her shoulder to front the silent savage.  “A chief of the Wyandots?”

He moved his head slightly, with a mutter of acquiescence, his eyes expressing wonder at the question.

“The same whom the Americans name Billy Caldwell?”

“’T is the word used by the whites.”

I drew a quick breath of relief, which caused Mademoiselle to release her grasp a little, as her anxious eyes sought my face for explanation.

“Recall you a day twelve years ago on the River Raisin?” I asked clearly, feeling confident now that my words were no longer idle.  “An Indian was captured in his canoe by a party of frontiersmen who were out to revenge a bloody raid along the valley of the Maumee.  That Indian was a Wyandot and a chief.  He was bound to a tree beside the river bank and condemned to torture; when the leader of the rangers, a man with a gray beard, stood before him rifle in hand, and swore to kill the first white man who put flint and steel to the wood.  Recall you this, Sau-ga-nash?”