“So you have been saying a word in my favour, have you?” said Robert, a little sarcastically. “Greatly obliged to you, Master Charlie, but I prefer doing my own pleading.” “I didn’t mean _you_,” said Charlie, a little indignantly. “She don’t know that there is such a thing as you. I meant all the white folks.” “Oh, you did,” answered Robert, looking wistfully in the direction where Orianna had disappeared. At that moment there was the report of a rifle, and a ball passed between him and Charlie and lodged in a tree a few feet distant. “So he,” exclaimed Robert, “wasn’t content with sending an arrow at my heart, but must hurl a bullet at my head.” Charlie was confounded. He never for a moment doubted that Orianna had sent the ball, and a fearful distrust of her filled his heart. A week went by, and still he neglected to take his accustomed walk, although he noticed that Robert went daily in his stead. At length one morning Robert came to him and said, “Orianna bade me tell you that each day, ’neath the buckeye tree, she’s watched for you in vain.” Charlie’s eyes opened wide with astonishment, as he exclaimed, “Orianna? Where have you seen Orianna?” “Where should I see her, pray, but in the woods?” answered Robert. “We have spent the last five days together there, and I have taken your place as teacher.” Here we may as well explain what the reader is doubtless anxious to know. The bullet which passed between Robert and Charlie was not sent by the hand of Orianna, but by the vicious Wahlaga, whose curiosity had been roused as to what led Orianna so frequently to the woods. On that day he had followed and discovered her, just at the moment when Robert appeared before her. The jealous savage, thinking that he looked upon his rival, made ready his gun, when Orianna, suddenly coming upon him, threw aside his arm, thus changing the course of the ball, while at the same time she led the excited Indian away, and at length succeeded in convincing him that never before had she seen Robert, nor did she even know who he was. The next morning Orianna was overjoyed to learn that Wahlaga was about leaving home, to be absent an indefinite length of time. Her happiness, however was soon clouded by some expressions which he let fall, and from which she gathered that her father had promised to give her in marriage as soon as he should return. “It shall never be; no, never,” said the determined girl, as, immediately after his departure, she took the narrow footpath to the woods of Glen’s Creek.