“You,—­you cannot be a devil also,” she said, stammeringly.  “You do not look like those others,—­are you a man?”

I bowed in silence, astounded by her words and appearance.

“Yet you are not of the garrison,—­not of Dearborn.  I have never seen your face before.  Yet you are surely a man, and white.  Holy Mother! can it indeed be that you have come to save me?”

“I am here to serve you by every means in my power,” I answered soberly, for the wildness of her speech almost frightened me.  “God, I truly think, must have led me to you.”

Her wonderful eyes, questioning, anxious, doubtful, never once left my face.

“Who are you?  How came you here?”

“I am named John Wayland,” I replied, striving to speak as simply as might be, so that she would comprehend, “and form one of a small party travelling overland from the east toward the Fort.  We are encamped yonder at the edge of the sand.  I left the camp an hour ago, and wandered hither that I might look out upon the waters of the Great Lake; and here, through the strange providence of God, I have found you.”

She glanced apprehensively backward over her shoulder across the darkened waters, and her slight form shook.

“Oh, please, take me away from it!” she cried, a note of undisguised terror in her voice, and her hands held out toward me in a pitiful gesture of appeal.  “Oh, that horrible, cruel water!  I have loved it in the past, but now I hate it; how horribly it has tortured me!  Take me away, I beg,—­anywhere, so that I can neither see nor hear it any more.  It has neither heart nor soul.”  And she hid her face behind the streaming hair.

“You will trust me, then?” I asked, for I had little knowledge of women.  “You will go with me?”

She flung the clinging locks back from her eyes, with an odd, imperious gesture which I thought most becoming, holding them in place with one hand, while extending the other frankly toward me.

“Go with you?  Yes,” she replied, unhesitatingly.  “I have known many men such as you are, men of the border, and have always felt free to trust them; they are far more true to helpless womanhood than many a perfumed cavalier.  You have a face that speaks of honor and manliness.  Yes, I will go with you gladly.”

I was deeply impressed by her sudden calmness, her rapid repression of that strange wildness of demeanor that had at first so marked her words and manner.  As I partially lifted her from the boat to the sand, she staggered heavily, and would have fallen had I not instantly caught her to me.  For a single moment her dark eyes looked up confidingly into mine, as she rested panting against my shoulder, and I could feel her slender form tremble within my arms.

“You are ill—­faint?” I questioned anxiously.

She drew back from me with all gentleness, and did not venture again to attempt standing entirely without support.