"I wonder if I could manage to get away from here, in case I got my hands free?" Sandy was saying; but almost immediately he discovered that close by was a squatting figure, evidently a guard, for he held a gun in his hands and seemed to be intently watching the head of the prisoner. So Sandy with a sigh drew back and waited for something to turn up. He was a most disconsolate figure as he crouched there, anticipating the worst; yet, while thinking of home and mother, trying to hope for the best. Then suddenly he started. Surely that was not the voice of an Indian he heard! Again he scrambled to the opening and thrust out his head. A neighboring fire lighted up the scene. It was of unusual size, and the boy immediately conceived the idea that the Indians meant to hold some sort of council, perhaps to decide his fate, for many were gathering around, with braves in the middle, and the squaws and boys on the outer fringe. And standing close by, in earnest conversation with one who seemed to be something of a chief, was a man in buckskin, a white man at that. At first Sandy felt a quick pulsation of fierce joy. Just to see a white man among all these dusky sons of the wilderness seemed to give him fresh courage. Then a spasm of chagrin passed over him, for he had remembered the stories told by Daniel Boone of those renegades, such as Simon Girty, who had turned their hand against their kind, and fought side by side with the savages, more cruel even than the Indians they had taken to be their brothers. "But no, he must be a French trader," he said immediately, as he listened to the voice of the man in buckskin; "like that Jacques Larue we met when we stopped at Will's Creek on the way from Virginia. It is the same! Yes, now I can see his face plainly. Oh! I wonder if he would help me get away!" Filled with this newly-awakened hope the boy prisoner lifted his voice and called out: "Monsieur Larue! oh! come this way, if you please!" CHAPTER XX THE COUNCIL FIRE "WHO calls me?" exclaimed the French trader, looking around him in some surprise. Evidently, although he must have known that the Indians had a prisoner, whose fate was to be decided at the council that was even then gathering, he could never have dreamed, up to now, that it was any one who knew him. "This way, please, monsieur. I am here in the lodge! Just to your right; now, if you look down you will see me!" cried Sandy, eagerly, though, if asked, he could not have told just why he fancied the Frenchman would assist him in the least. "Sacre! what haf we here? A young Eenglish viper, it seems. Ha! and surely ve haf before now met! Is it not so?" said the trader, as by the light of the council fire he saw Sandy's face. "Oh! yes, it was at Will's Creek. You remember we came into the place just before you left there, monsieur? You asked my father ever so many questions about what his business was. I am Sandy Armstrong, the youngest of his boys."