The twelve militia-men are never again mentioned. They are as if they had never been born, lived and toiled, never volunteered, never served, fought and fell. How is this to be accounted for? Why should their mortality be twice as great as that of the regulars? Darkness hides the answer; but it seems not unlikely that the same hellish ingenuity which held that "the wounded were not included," may also have held that men not wearing the uniform were not protected by the capitulation, and so they perished at the stake, surrounded by the "general frolic" which occupied the savages, good and bad, friendly and inimical, during the flight of the Healds and Kinzies. There was no place on earth for a race which, through all its history, had found delight in the spectacle of pain, which inflicted torture, not as a means leading to some ulterior object, but as itself a source of joy and gladness. The race is still in existence, but the inhuman part of its characteristics are being refined away, leaving some of its best traits in the more advanced of its present representatives. Later on in this volume mention is made of its standing and its prospects at this time. Now to take up again the Wau-Bun narrative. The torturing incident, already given, evidently ends the story of Mrs. Helm's personal experiences; all that follows being what others professed to have seen. Yet (possibly by typographical error) the quotation marks, which began with the narration, are continued much further on, including paragraphs wherein she is spoken of in the third person. (See later.) Mrs Helm says: The Americans, after the first attack by the Indians, charged upon those who had concealed themselves in a sort of ravine intervening between the sand-banks and the prairie. The latter gathered themselves into a body, and after some hard fighting, in which the number of whites had become reduced to twenty-eight, this little band succeeded in breaking through the enemy and gaining a rising ground not far from the oak woods. The contest now seemed hopeless, and Lieutenant Helm sent Peresh Leclerc, a half-breed boy in the service of Mr. Kinzie, who had accompanied the detachment and fought manfully on their side, to propose terms of capitulation. It was stipulated that the lives of all the survivors should be spared and a ransom permitted as soon as practicable. Lieutenant Helm made the terms of capitulation? How could that be while Captain Heald was present? And what is to be done with Captain Heald's statement of October 7, 1812, less than three months after the event? It reads as follows: "The Indians did not follow me but assembled in a body on the top of the bank, and, after some consultation among themselves, made signs for me to approach them. I advanced toward them alone and was met by one of the Pottowatomie chief called Black Bird, with an interpreter."