There was a cloud on the outlaw's brow, and the longer he listened the more impatient and perplexed he became. The minutes resolved themselves into hours, and when he believed that the ghostly hour of one had arrived, an oath fell from his lips, and he turned into the cabin. But he soon reappeared with a short-barreled rifle, and left the hut as if bent upon hunting for some one whom he had been expecting. "Something unlooked for may have transpired," he murmured. "Wolf Cap and that young fellow may have disarranged my plans by appearing suddenly at the camp; but I am sure that Wells will never get the message which they left in the tree." Girty smiled as he recalled the theft of Harvey Catlett's message from the forest letter box, and congratulated himself that Wells and Hummingbird (a famous chief and spy in Wayne's employ) would find the tree empty when they should reach it. The self-congratulations still lingered in his heart when the report of a distant rifle, faint, but clear enough, nevertheless, struck his practiced ear. He stopped suddenly and listened. "A rifle, but no death cry," he said, addressing himself. "But too far off for that, perhaps." Then he stooped and put his ear to the ground, in which attitude he remained for several moments. But the stillness of death brooded over the vicinity. When Girty rose it was with a perplexed look; the shot seemed to revolve itself into a mystery, to which he attached the utmost importance. "There is one person in these parts whose bullets never make a death cry," he said; "but if she shot _him_, I don't see why, for she knows that we are friends. However, I'm going down to see what the matter is." He started toward the river at a brisk walk. It was ten miles distant, but he knew that the mysterious shot had been fired not far away. By and by his walk resolved itself into the dog-trot of the Indian, and he hastened through the woods as if a regular path stretched before him. The dew lay on the grass pressed by his dingy moccasin, and, save now and then the snapping of a twig, his progress sent forth no noise. All at once, as he reached the summit of a wooded knoll, he was brought to a stand. At his feet, as it were, was a space of ground over which a hurricane had at some time swept with relentless fury. The results of its work, broken trees and fallen ones, were apparent to the eye. Into this place the starlight fell, and the rays of the moon, soon to bathe herself in the waters of the Maumee, penetrated like shafts of silver. The scene that presented itself to the outlaw was enough to startle him. He saw two figures in the light--two living ones, we mean--but not far remote, with face upturned to the stars, lay a giant form, motionless as the earth itself. A second look told the renegade the author of the midnight shot. She stood beside a young girl, and these words in a well known voice greeted his ears: "White girl tired, but Areotha will save her if she will go."