"Better go at once, then," sneered the captain. "Go? through the woods where they are probably swarming? Thank you, no; 'twould be a greater risk than to stay where I am." "Suppose then you go with the party in the pirogue, down the river to Cincinnati?" "Nonsense! that would be scarcely safer; the savages might easily pursue it in a canoe, or fire on us from the shore." "Then my advice to you is to stay and meet the danger like a man." "Of course, of course," stammered Lyttleton; "but I wish I'd never come. I shouldn't, if I hadn't understood that all danger of hostilities was entirely past. I've no mind to go home to old England without my scalp." "If that's your only concern," returned the captain dryly, "you may set your mind at rest; there's no danger that you will go back without your scalp." "You mean that they'll finish me if they get the chance," muttered Lyttleton, turning away with a look of intense disgust. "He's a coward!" said the captain to himself; and Nell Lamar was at that very moment expressing the same opinion to Clare at the conclusion of a breathless narration of the events of the last hour. "Perhaps not, don't be too ready to judge him hardly," returned Clara, who was partial to the Englishman's handsome person, winning address, and apparently full purse, and would have been more than willing to bestow Nell's hand upon him. "I have no wish to be unjust or uncharitable," said Nell, "but he was so pale and so agitated from the moment he heard the news till he left me here at the door that I was even forced to the conclusion that he was afraid." The afternoon was full of excitement. Dale ran in for a moment to say good-by. He was one of the party detailed to go for ammunition. "You will be in danger?" Nell said inquiringly, as they shook hands. "Yes, probably: yet perhaps not more so than those who stay behind. I'm not specially uneasy on that score, in fact, have but one objection to going upon the errand, that in case of an attack during our absence I shall not be here to help defend you." He seemed excited but full of a cheerful courage. "Don't be too anxious, ladies, I cannot help hoping the whole thing will blow over," were his last words as he hurried away. An unspoken fear lay heavy at Nell's heart, Dr. Clendenin, where was he? Coe had told of his warning to him, but that he had gone on his way all the same as if no danger lay in it, and Nell reflected with a feeling of exultant admiration, that he would never desert the post of duty through fear of consequences to himself. But should she ever see him again? He might be even now lying dead and scalped by the roadside or in the woods, as Captain Herrod had been found, or perchance wounded and bleeding, dying for lack of help. How she shuddered and turned pale at the very thought, while now and again a wild impulse seized her to mount her pony and away in search of him.