Wingenund deigned no reply.  He stood as he did so often, still and silent, with folded arms, and a look that was haughty, unresponsive.

The Indians came forward into the glade, and one of them quickly bound Jim’s hands behind his back.  The savages wore a wild, brutish look.  A feverish ferocity, very near akin to insanity, possessed them.  They were not quiet a moment, but ran here and there, for no apparent reason, except, possibly, to keep in action with the raging fire in their hearts.  The cleanliness which characterized the normal Indian was absent in them; their scant buckskin dress was bedraggled and stained.  They were still drunk with rum and the lust for blood.  Murder gleamed from the glance of their eyes.

“Jake, come over here,” said Girty to his renegade friend.  “Ain’t she a prize?”

Girty and Deering stood before the poor, stricken girl, and gloated over her fair beauty.  She stood as when first transfixed by the horror from which she had been fleeing.  Her pale face was lowered, her hands clenched tightly in the folds of her skirt.

Never before had two such coarse, cruel fiends as Deering and Girty encumbered the earth.  Even on the border, where the best men were bad, they were the worst.  Deering was yet drunk, but Girty had recovered somewhat from the effects of the rum he had absorbed.  The former rolled his big eyes and nodded his shaggy head.  He was passing judgment, from his point of view, on the fine points of the girl.

“She cer’aintly is,” he declared with a grin.  “She’s a little beauty.  Beats any I ever seen!”

Jim Girty stroked his sharp chin with dirty fingers.  His yellow eyes, his burnt saffron skin, his hooked nose, his thin lips—­all his evil face seemed to shine with an evil triumph.  To look at him was painful.  To have him gaze at her was enough to drive any woman mad.

Dark stains spotted the bright frills of his gaudy dress, his buckskin coat and leggins, and dotted his white eagle plumes.  Dark stains, horribly suggestive, covered him from head to foot.  Blood stains!  The innocent blood of Christians crimsoned his renegade’s body, and every dark red blotch cried murder.

“Girl, I burned the Village of Peace to git you,” growled Girty.  “Come here!”

With a rude grasp that tore open her dress, exposing her beautiful white shoulder and bosom, the ruffian pulled her toward him.  His face was transfixed with a fierce joy, a brutal passion.

Deering looked on with a drunken grin, while his renegade friend hugged the almost dying girl.  The Indians paced the glade with short strides like leashed tigers.  The young missionary lay on the moss with closed eyes.  He could not endure the sight of Nell in Girty’s arms.

No one noticed Wingenund.  He stood back a little, half screened by drooping branches.  Once again the chief’s dark eyes gleamed, his head turned a trifle aside, and, standing in the statuesque position habitual with him when resting, he listened, as one who hears mysterious sounds.  Suddenly his keen glance was riveted on the ferns above the low cliff.  He had seen their graceful heads quivering.  Then two blinding sheets of flame burst from the ferns.