Unable to speak, the young hunter advanced. “William, this is our boy,” she said, taking our hero’s hands, and looking up at Hewitt. “Long I waited for your return, William; but you came not. At last I resolved to go to Richmond, where I thought you were detained. I took our boy--a little babe--to Ronald Fairfax, and told him to keep him till I should return. Then, all alone, I plunged into the wilderness, but soon the Shawnees circled around me, and I was a prisoner. While they were conducting me to the village I tried to escape, but a chief struck me with his tomahawk, and then all was dark. Oh, William, how long have I been in darkness? You are so old now, and our Edgar a man!” “For twenty years, Agnes, you have lived among the Shawnees, reft of reason,” whispered Hewitt. A shudder crept to the woman’s heart. “Twenty years a maniac! My God!” she cried. “Oh, William, speak not to me of that time. I would forget it. Let us leave this horrid place.” Almost unassisted, she gained her feet, and Tecumseh bade the hermit conduct her to his beaded lodge, while the chief chivalrously occupied a meaner one near by. The hours of that night were sacred to the reunited trio; and beyond earshot a band of warriors encircled the beaded wigwam. Tecumseh would keep his vow. During the late war-expedition the knife of a vengeful mother struck at his heart; but the intervention of a white prisoner, whom he liberated, saved his life. When the Indians saw the whites beyond the portals of the chief’s lodge, they returned to the bloody spot for the purpose of attending to the wounded and the dead. The wolves had deserted Jim Girty, and during the absence of Tecumseh’s band, one of his spies had borne his insensible form to the river, where they entered a boat, and the spy rowed away. After much suffering the renegade recovered, and remained from the sight of his brother Simon the remainder of his life. While the savages were attending to the wounded, a groan rose from a dark form on the earth. It grew into a death-song. “Oonalooska is near the great waters! Oonalooska’s dream was from spirit land! Now let Oonalooska die, for he has seen the Lone Man find his long-lost squaw and pappoose. Oonalooska is not afraid to die. Tecumseh can not torture him now, ha! ha! ha!” and thus, stoically--proud of having cheated his enemies, the soul of the bravest chief of the Shawnee tribe stepped upon the “trail of death.” When morning came Tecumseh tenderly bade the whites farewell, and a band of trusty warriors escorted them to Chillicothe. Thence they set out for Virginia, and Edgar Hewitt--Mayne Fairfax no longer--presented his long-lost parents to those who had been a father and mother to him from childhood to manly years.