stabbed a police officer at Omaha, whose people, so Moreau said, agreed not to prosecute him if one thousand dollars could be paid at once. Hay's patience had been exhausted. He had firmly refused to contribute another cent to settle Moreau's scrapes, even though he was a distant kinsman of his wife, and they both were fond of his little sister Fawn Eyes. It had never occurred to Mrs. Hay that Nan could steal from or plot against her benefactors, but that was before she dreamed that Nanette had become the Indian's wife. After that, anything might happen. "If she could do _that_ for love of Moreau," said she, "there was nothing she could not do." And it would seem there was little short of deliberate murder she had not done for her Sioux lover, who had rewarded her utter self-sacrifice by a savage blow with a revolver butt. "Poor Nanette!" sobbed Mrs. Hay, and "Poor Nanette!" said all Fort Frayne, their distrust of her buried and forgotten as she lay, refusing herself to everyone; starving herself in dull, desperate misery in her lonely room. Even grim old "Black Bill," whom she had recognized at once,--Bill, who had been the first to confirm Blake's suspicions as to her identity,--had pity and compassion for her. "It's the way of the blood," said Blake. "She is "'Bred out of that bloody strain That haunted us in our familiar paths.'" "She could do no different," said the general, "having fixed her love on him. It's the strain of the Sioux. _We_ call her conduct criminal:--they call it sublime." And one night, while decision in Nanette's case was still pending, and, still self-secluded, she hid within the trader's home, refusing speech with anyone but little Fawn Eyes, a sleighing party set out from Frayne for a spin by moonlight along the frozen Platte. Wagon bodies had been set on runners, and piled with hay. The young people from officers' row, with the proper allowance of matrons and elders, were stowed therein, and tucked in robes and furs, Esther Dade among them, gentle and responsive as ever, yet still very silent. Field, in his deep mourning, went nowhere. He seemed humiliated beyond words by his connection with this most painful affair. Even the general failed to cheer and reassure him. He blamed himself for everything and shrank even from his friends. They saw the dim glow of the student lamp in his quarters, as they jingled cheerily away. They were coming homeward, toward ten o'clock. The moon was shining brilliantly along the bold heights of the southern bank, and, insensibly, chat and laughter gradually ceased as they came again in sight of the twinkling lights of Frayne, and glanced aloft at a new-made scaffolding, standing black against the sky at the crest of Fetterman Bluff. "Eagle Wing roosts high," said a thoughtless youngster. "The general let them have their way to the last. What's that?" he added, with sudden stop.