moonlight, beamed with a soft radiance. They were honest eyes, just now filled
with innocentsadness and regret, but they drew him with irresistible power.

Without realizing in the least what he was doing he yielded to the impulse.
Bending his head he kissed the tremulous lips.

"Oh," whispered Betty, standing still as a statue and looking at him with
wonderful eyes. Then, as reason returned, a hot flush dyed her face, and

wrenching her hands free she struck him across the cheek.
"For God's sake, Betty, I did not mean to do that! Wait. I have something to

tell you. For pity's sake, let me explain," he cried, as the full enormity of
his offence dawned upon him.

Betty was deaf to the imploring voice, for she ran into the house and slammed
the door.

He called to her, but received no answer. He knocked on the door, but it
remained closed. He stood still awhile, trying to collect his thoughts, and to

find a way to undo the mischief he had wrought. When the real significance of
his act came to him he groaned in spirit. What a fool he had been! Only a few

short hours and he must start on a perilous journey, leaving the girl he loved
in ignorance of his real intentions. Who was to tell her that he loved her?

Who was to tell her that it was because his whole heart and soul had gone to
her that he had kissed her?

With bowed head he slowly walked away toward the fort, totally oblivious of
the fact that a young girl, with hands pressed tightly over her breast to try

to still a madly beating heart, watched him from her window until he
disappeared into the shadow of the block-house.

Alfred paced up and down his room the four remaining hours of that eventful
day. When the light was breaking in at the east and dawn near at hand he heard

the rough voices of men and the tramping of iron-shod hoofs. The hour of his
departure was at hand.

He sat down at his table and by the aid of the dim light from a pine knot he
wrote a hurried letter to Betty. A little hope revived in his heart as he

thought that perhaps all might yet be well. Surely some one would be up to
whom he could intrust the letter, and if no one he would run over and slip it

under the door of Colonel Zane's house.
In the gray of the early morning Alfred rode out with the daring band of

heavily armed men, all grim and stern, each silent with the thought of the man
who knows he may never return. Soon the settlement was left far behind.

CHAPTER V.
During the last few days, in which the frost had cracked open the hickory

nuts, and in which the squirrels had been busily collecting and storing away
their supply of nuts for winter use, it had been Isaac's wont to shoulder his

rifle, walk up the hill, and spend the morning in the grove.
On this crisp autumn morning he had started off as usual, and had been called

back by Col. Zane, who advised him not to wander far from the settlement. This
admonition, kind and brotherly though it was, annoyed Isaac. Like all the

Zanes he had born in him an intense love for the solitude of the wilderness.
There were times when nothing could satisfy him but the calm of the deep

woods.
One of these moods possessed him now. Courageous to a fault and daring where

daring was not always the wiser part, Isaac lacked the practical sense of the
Colonel and the cool judgment of Jonathan. Impatient of restraint, independent

in spirit, and it must be admitted, in his persistence in doing as he liked
instead of what he ought to do, he resembled Betty more than he did his

brothers.
Feeling secure in his ability to take care of himself, for he knew he was an

experienced hunter and woodsman, he resolved to take a long tramp in the
forest. This resolution was strengthened by the fact that he did not believe

what the Colonel and Jonathan had told him--that it was not improbable some of
the Wyandot braves were lurking in the vicinity, bent on killing or

recapturing him. At any rate he did not fear it.
Once in the shade of the great trees the fever of discontent left him, and,

forgetting all except the happiness of being surrounded by the silent oaks, he
penetrated creeper and deeper into the forest. The brushing of a branch

against a tree, the thud of a falling nut, the dart of a squirrel, and the
sight of a bushy tail disappearing round a limb-- all these things which

indicated that the little gray fellows were working in the tree-tops, and
which would usually have brought Isaac to a standstill, now did not seem to

interest him. At times he stooped to examine the tender shoots growing at the
foot of a sassafras tree. Then, again, he closely examined marks he found in

the soft banks of the streams.
He went on and on. Two hours of this still-hunting found him on the bank of a

shallow gully through which a brook went rippling and babbling over the mossy
green stones. The forest was dense here; rugged oaks and tall poplars grew

high over the tops of the first growth of white oaks and beeches; the wild
grapevines which coiled round the trees like gigantic serpents, spread out in

the upper branches and obscured the sun; witch-hopples and laurel bushes grew
thickly; monarchs of the forest, felled by some bygone storm, lay rotting on

the ground; and in places the wind-falls were so thick and high as to be
impenetrable.

Isaac hesitated. He realized that he had plunged far into the Black Forest.
Here it was gloomy; a dreamy quiet prevailed, that deep calm of the

wilderness, unbroken save for the distant note of the hermit-thrush, the
strange bird whose lonely cry, given at long intervals, pierced the stillness.

Although Isaac had never seen one of these birds, he was familiar with that
cry which was never heard except in the deepest woods, far from the haunts of

man.
A black squirrel ran down a tree and seeing the hunter scampered away in

alarm. Isaac knew the habits of the black squirrel, that it was a denizen of
the wildest woods and frequented only places remote from civilization. The

song of the hermit and the sight of the black squirrel caused Isaac to stop
and reflect, with the result that he concluded he had gone much farther from

the fort than he had intended. He turned to retrace his steps when a faint
sound from down the ravine came to his sharp ears.

There was no instinct to warn him that a hideously painted face was raised a
moment over the clump of laurel bushes to his left, and that a pair of keen

eyes watched every move he made.
Unconscious of impending evil Isaac stopped and looked around him. Suddenly

above the musicalbabble of the brook and the rustle of the leaves by the
breeze came a repetition of the sound. He crouched close by the trunk of a

tree and strained his ears. All was quiet for some moments. Then he heard the
patter, patter of little hoofs coming down the stream. Nearer and nearer they

came. Sometimes they were almost inaudible and again he heard them clearly and
distinctly. Then there came a splashing and the faint hollow sound caused by

hard hoofs striking the stones in shallow water. Finally the sounds ceased.
Cautiously peering from behind the tree Isaac saw a doe standing on the bank

fifty yards down the brook. Trembling she had stopped as if in doubt or
uncertainty. Her ears pointed straight upward, and she lifted one front foot

from the ground like a thoroughbred pointer. Isaac knew a doe always led the
way through the woods and if there were other deer they would come up unless

warned by the doe. Presently the willows parted and a magnificent buck with
wide spreading antlers stepped out and stood motionless on the bank. Although

they were down the wind Isaac knew the deer suspected some hidden danger. They
looked steadily at the clump of laurels at Isaac's left, a circumstance he

remarked at the time, but did not understand the real significance of until
long afterward.

Following the ringing report of Isaac's rifle the buck sprang almost across
the stream, leaped convulsively up the bank, reached the top, and then his

strength failing, slid down into the stream, where, in his dying struggles,
his hoofs beat the water into white foam. The doe had disappeared like a brown

flash.
Isaac, congratulating himself on such a fortunate shot--for rarely indeed does

a deer fail dead in his tracks even when shot through the heart-- rose from
his crouching position and commenced to reload his rifle. With great care he

poured the powder into the palm of his hand, measuring the quantity with his
eye--for it was an evidence of a hunter's skill to be able to get the proper

quantity for the ball. Then he put the charge into the barrel. Placing a
little greased linsey rag, about half an inch square, over the muzzle, he laid

a small lead bullet on it, and with the ramrod began to push the ball into the
barrel.

A slight rustle behind him, which sounded to him like the gliding of a
rattlesnake over the leaves, caused him to start and turn round. But he was

too late. A crushing blow on the head from a club in the hand of a brawny
Indian laid him senseless on the ground.

When Isaac regained his senses he felt a throbbing pain in his head, and then
he opened his eyes he was so dizzy that he was unable to discern objects

clearly. After a few moments his sight returned. When he had struggled to a
sitting posture he discovered that his hands were bound with buckskin thongs.