At last they reached a basin in the hills, locked in by a chain of ledges, crowned with trees and covered with creeping ferns and mosses. A fire was burning in this little hollow; the rain beat upon it through the branches, but still it flamed up, giving glow and warmth to the night. Around this fire a group of Indians sat in patient watching for their chief. He approached them softly and spoke a few gentle words. The Indians stood up and gazed at Barbara in respectful wonder. She in her turn looked upon their stately forms and worn habiliments with a strange feeling of safety. These men wore no paint; their robes of dressed deer-skin were faded and without ornament. Nothing about them seemed worthy of care, except the guns that they leaned upon, and the pouches in which they kept powder and lead. The young chief spoke with his followers in their own language. He told them more of Barbara Stafford's history than any person in America knew except himself. How she was the daughter of a proud old chief in the mother country, who owned lands broad almost as the wilderness they stood in, with a vast dwelling which rose from the earth like a mountain peak. The savages needed no more than this, for they had heard his speech near the beacon fire, but he seemed to find proud joy in telling them that the lady, so gentle and so good, now their guest, so far as God's wilderness could afford hospitality, had bought him of his task-masters, and taken him to foreign countries, where she and her father travelled together in sad companionship, for both were unhappy, and found his affection a solace. She had in her beautiful kindness redeemed his soul from ignorance, as she had purchased his body from the slave-driver's lash. After this she and her proud father had taken him to their home in England--that grand home in which they were held as chiefs and princes--where the old chief died, leaving his daughter alone in her proud domain. Here the young man paused, his eyes fell, and his haughty lip began to tremble. He spoke in the Indian tongue, which Barbara could not understand, but the swarthy blood burned on his forehead as her eye turned upon him, and for a moment he shrunk from telling the whole truth; but his brave nature gained the mastery, and he went on, yet with humility in his voice, and shame burning in his downcast eyes. "My children, I loved the lady from the hour her hand unlocked my chains, but the secret lay buried deep in my heart, and no one guessed how it burned there. When her father was dead, and I saw her alone, with no one but me to counsel or comfort her, this love broke from its covert and frightened her almost into hating me. She did not mock me with scorn, but--" Here the Indians broke their grim silence, and signs of proud anger passed between them. At last one spoke.