"I don't keer for myself," said the other, gloomily; "a soldier's got to buck agin the wuss thing as comes without sayin' a word. But I'm a-thinkin' of the old 'oman and the little gals." Mr. Kinzie saw the canoe shoot from under a clump of bushes and skim swiftly across the narrow river, to-day a black and unattractive body of muddy water, but at that time a pellucid stream where fish leaped to the angler's bait. "To-pee-nee-be's messenger has come," said Harold, "and brings word that the two big canoes will cross to-night from St. Joseph to take off the family at sunrise." "Thank God!" cried the trader, fervently, for sure as he felt for himself of the comparatively friendly feeling of the savage horde gathered there, he knew Indian nature too well to trust it when mad with the thirst for blood-shed. The chief of the St. Joseph band had a few days before warned him of treachery, and offered to convey his wife and children across the lake to his own village. "Harold, you must stay with Mrs. Kinzie in the canoes," said he. "I shall march with the troops, and do what I can. Perhaps I may have some influence till if comes to the worst. I depend on you. I know what your wish is, but you must forego it now. You've had your taste of Indians already. Remember, you only escaped by the skin of your teeth last spring." "Yes," was Harold's reply; "and I shall never be happy till I've--" He bit the words off short, but the boy's smooth face was a man's in its stamp of passion and resolve, for the frontier lads often got old in will and courage before their chins grew beards. Some of the legends of boys' doings in the annals of Indian warfare are as stirring as the stories of Homer's heroes. Harold had had righteous cause for his feelings. Four mouths before, on a bright spring day, a score of Pottawattomies had entered the house of his uncle, about two miles up the river from the fort, and asked for food. Their tongues were friendly, but their eyes sullen. "Harold," said his uncle Lee, "go over the river with Beaubien and feed the horses," but his look said, "Paddle as fast as you can to the fort for help." The Frenchman and he had scarcely gotten well into the stream before there came the spit of bullets, and then came a continuous crackle, with the shrieking of women and children, and then silence. Harold, left friendless, found a protector in Mr. Kinzie; but his heart flamed always hot with that memory. The Kinzie family would be as safe without him, and he was swept by his rash fancies as if his will were a soap-bubble.