For a moment she did not answer.  Doubtless it was a bitter struggle for her thus to agree even to meet the man again.  At last she made reply, although I could plainly mark the faltering of her voice.

“The man of whom you speak shall be there,” she said, “unless some accident make it impossible.”

As I drew back my head, and sat upright.  Mademoiselle spoke questioningly.

“With whom were you conversing just now, Monsieur?”

“The young woman of whom we have spoken so often,” I answered thoughtlessly.  “She has pledged herself to bring De Croix to the meeting-place.”

“Indeed!” she exclaimed, with accent so peculiar I knew not how to interpret it.  “It almost makes me desire to form one of your party.”

CHAPTER XXXIII

AN INTERVENTION OF FATE

“Form one of our party?” I echoed, believing I must have misunderstood her words.  “Surely, Mademoiselle, you cannot mean that you take your promise to the half-breed so seriously as voluntarily to remain in captivity?”

“Yes, but I do, Monsieur!” and the tone in which she said it was firm with decision.  “The Indian asked my pledge in all solemnity, and has gone away trusting to it.  My conscience could never again be clear did I prove false in such a matter.  You also made a pledge, even before mine was given; was it not your purpose to abide by it?”

“No,” I answered, a bit shortly.  “I merely agreed to his proposition at your expressed desire that I should, and because I believed you had framed some plan of escape.  Have you such small respect for me, Mademoiselle, as to think I could consent to leave you here alone and at the mercy of these red fiends?  Have I risked my life in coming here for no other end than this?”

I felt her reach her arm across the pile of skins lying between us, and grasp my hand within her own.

“But, dear friend, you must!” she said, pleadingly, her softly modulated voice dwelling upon the words as if they came hard.  “Truly you must, John Wayland, and for my sake as well as your own.  I am comparatively safe here,—­safe at least from actual physical harm, so long as the savages dream that the sparing of my life will yield them profit.  You have no right to remain in such peril as surrounds you here, when by so doing you benefit no one.  You have father and mother awaiting in prayer your safe return to them yonder on the Maumee; while I,—­I have no one even to ask how sad my fate may be.  Think you that because I am a girl I must therefore be all selfishness? or that I would ever permit you thus to sacrifice yourself unnecessarily for me?  No, no, Monsieur!  I will remain prisoner to Little Sauk, for my sacred word has been pledged; and you must go, because there are others to whom your life is of value.  Nor need you go empty-handed, for the one you have sought so far and long seems now ready enough to travel eastward with you.”