Moreover her own actions began to trouble her. No longer could she keep up the fiction that she was a prisoner. Prisoners do not bring their captors back to the jail from which they have escaped. Moreover she had conspired against this very fort, under whose protecting walls she had sought refuge for herself and Jack. Gloze the fact over as she might she could not wholly put away the thought that her acts were both treacherous and ungrateful. Throughout July she had seen nothing of the runner and had heard no word to tell that Tecumseh had received her message or had acted upon it. None of the Miamis, who lived in the vicinity, had approached her with any word from the Shawnee chieftain. Early in August, however, Metea, chief of the Pottawatomies, who lived a little to the west, sought her out and gave her to understand that he knew who she was and to assure her that any message she wished to send to Tecumseh would be transmitted. “Metea goes to Yondotia (Detroit),” he said. “Even now his moccasins are on his feet and his tomahawk in his belt. Has the white maiden any word to send.” His words struck Alagwa with a panic which she found herself unable to conceal. Falteringly she declared that she had no word to send other than that she was faithful to the redmen’s cause and would help it all she could. She did not repeat her message about the scarcity of powder at the fort. When Metea had gone she hid herself and wept. The next day, however, Jack took a sudden turn for the better, and the girl’s joy in his improvement drove all misgivings from her mind. Once it had begun Jack’s improvement grew apace. A week went by without sign of relapse. His eyes shone with the light of reason; his voice grew smooth; his figure straightened; almost he seemed himself again. The surgeon from the fort, however, still counselled caution. With returning strength the lad began to fret about the failure of his mission to the northwest and to declare that he must be off to Detroit in search of his cousin. In vain Alagwa urged upon him that he must be fully restored to health before he attempted to exert himself, and in vain the surgeon warned him that any sudden stress, either mental or physical, was likely to bring about a relapse. Jack felt well and strong and chafed bitterly at his inaction. One day, a little past the middle of August, he and Alagwa (with Cato hovering in the background) sought temporary refuge from the heat beneath the great tree before the door of the hotel--the tree whence Alagwa had sounded the call of the whip-poor-will on that June night nearly two months before.