And it was no less bitter because revenge seemed hopeless. Tecumseh was planning revenge, she knew, but he no longer found the support he had gained a year before. His own people, the Shawnees, implacable fighters as they had been, had wearied of war at last. Black Wolf, the chief at Wapakoneta, himself once a great warrior and a bitter foe of the whites, now preached that further resistance was vain--that it meant only death. Many of the tribe sided with him, for the Indian, no more than the white man, unless maddened by long tyranny, cares to engage in a contest where triumph is hopeless. The only hope lay in the redcoats, soldiers of the great king across the water. They were planning war against the Long Knives. If they should make common cause with the red men, revenge might yet be won. If she could do anything to help! A footstep startled her and she flashed about to find Simon Girty and the tall man in the red coat almost upon her. While she had dreamed of the return of Tecumseh they had crossed the Auglaize river and had come upon her unawares. Girty was as she had many times remembered him--a deeply-tanned man perhaps forty years of age, with gray, sunken eyes, thin and compressed lips, hyena chin, and dark shaggy hair bound with a handkerchief above a low forehead, across which stretched a ghastly half-healed wound. In his arms he carried a great bale, carefully wrapped. The other--Alagwa had never seen his like before--was tall and powerful looking. His carriage was graceful and easy. His dark face, handsome in a way though plainly not so handsome as it had been some years before, was characterized by a powerful jaw that diverted attention from his strong mouth and aquiline nose. He was regarding the girl with an expression evidently intended to be friendly, but which somehow grated. It seemed at once condescending, appraising, and insolent. All this Alagwa took in at a glance as she shrank backward, intent on flight. But before she could move Girty’s voice broke in. “Stop!” he ordered, sharply, in the Shawnee tongue. “The white chief from afar would speak with the Star maiden.” Alagwa paused, looking fearfully backward. But she did not speak and Girty went on. “The white chief is of the House of Alagwa,” he declared. “His heart is warm toward her. He brings good news and many presents to lay at her feet.” He laid down the bale. Alagwa looked from it to the man and back again. “Let him speak,” she said, in somewhat halting English. At the sound of his own tongue the Englishman’s face lighted up and he took an impulsive step forward. “You speak English?” he exclaimed, with a note of wonder in his voice. “Why did nobody tell me that? How did you learn?” His surprise did not seem altogether complimentary.