The earliest haze of the fast-descending twilight was hovering over the level plain as we two went forth.  In the west, the red tinge of the sun, which had just disappeared below the horizon, lingered well up in the sky.  Against it we could see, clearly outlined in inky blackness, the distant Indian wigwams; while to the eastward the crimson light was reflected in fantastic glow upon the heaving surface of the lake.  For a moment we paused, standing upon the slope of the mound on which the Fort was built, and gazed about us.  There was little movement to arrest the eye.  The dull, dreary level of shore and prairie was deserted; what the more distant mounds of sand or the overhanging river banks might hide of savage watchers, we could only conjecture.  Seemingly the mass of Indian life, which only the day before had overflowed that vacant space, had vanished as if by some sorcerer’s magic.  To me, this unexpected silence and dreary barrenness were astounding; I gazed about me fairly bewildered, almost dreaming for the moment that our foes had lifted the long siege and departed while I slept.  Heald no doubt read the thought in my eyes, for he laid a kindly hand upon my sleeve and pointed westward.

“They are all yonder, lad, at the camp,—­in council, like enough.  Mark you, Wayland, how much farther to the south the limit of their camp extends than when the sun sank last night?  Saint George! they must have added all of fifty wigwams to their village!  They gather like crows about a dead body.  It has an ugly look.”

“Yet ’t is strange they leave the Fort unguarded, so that the garrison may come and go unhindered.  ’T is not the usual practice of Indian warfare.”

“Unguarded?  Faith! the hundreds of miles of wilderness between us and our nearest neighbor are sufficient guard.  But dream not, my lad, that we are unobserved; doubtless fifty pair of skulking eyes are even now upon us, marking every move.  I venture we travel no more than a hundred yards from the gate before our way is barred.  Note how peaceful the stockade appears!  But for the closed gates, one would never dream it the centre of hostile attack.  Upon my word, even love-making has not deserted its log-walls!”

I lifted my eyes where he pointed, and even at that distance, and through the gathering gloom, I knew it was De Croix and Mademoiselle who overhung those eastern palisades in proximity so close.  The sight was as fire to my blood, and with teeth clinched to keep back the mad utterance of a curse, I strode beside Captain Heald silently down the declivity to the deserted plain below.

It is my nature to be somewhat chary of speech, and to feel deeply and long; but if I doubted it before, I knew now, in, this moment of keen and bitter disappointment, that my heart was with that careless girl up yonder, who had sent me forth into grave peril apparently without thought, and who cared so little even now that she never lifted her eyes from the sparkling water to trace our onward progress.  Anger, disappointment, disgust at her duplicity, her cruel abuse of power, swept over and mastered me at the moment when I realized more deeply than ever my own love for her, and my utter helplessness to oppose her slightest whim.  No Indian thongs could bind me half so tightly as the false smiles of Toinette.