Without pursuing the conversation further, it may suffice to remark that Wau-nan-gee left not Mrs. Ronayne until he had exacted her promise to meet him on the following afternoon in the summer-house, when he said he would be enabled to show her a place where, with her husband, she might be concealed as soon as it was known on what day the Indians should have decided on their attack. This he pledged himself to have arranged in the course of the morning, so that by the afternoon she should be enabled to judge of the convenience it afforded. The trunks seen by Ronayne at Hardscrabble, were hastily packed by Mrs. Ronayne with articles of clothing for both, and conveyed by Wau-nan-gee that night through his secret entrance to the summer-house, and subsequently removed. Not liking to call attention to the circumstance of her crossing the water unaccompanied, and moreover, really desiring the presence of one of her own sex to sustain her in the course that had been forced upon her, she had requested Mrs. Headley to bear her company. On her entering the summer-house, the trap-door, which appeared to have been made that very morning, was open; but instead of Wau-nan-gee, she beheld standing near its entrance another dark Indian whom she had too much reason to fear and dread. It has already been remarked that Pee-to-tum was not a genuine Pottowatomie, but one of that race whose very name is a synonym with treachery and falsehood--a Chippewa. With low, heavy features; a dark, scowling brow; coarse, long, dark hair, shading the restless, ever-moving eye that, like that of the serpent, seemed to fascinate where most the cold and slimy animal sought to sting; the broad, coarse nose; the skin partaking more in the Chippewa, of that offensive, rank odor peculiar to the Indian, than any others of the race; with all these loathsome attributes of person, yet with a soul swelling with the most unbounded vanity and self-sufficiency, based on ignorance and assumption; this man, although having a wife and children grown up, had dared to cast the eye of desire on Mrs. Ronayne. Long had he watched her, not as the gentle, the pure, the self-sacrificing Wau-nan-gee, but as a tiger gloating for his prey. To possess her had been one of his leading motives in urging the alliance with the tribes in the British interests--to hasten the moment she might become a prisoner in his hands, his chief aim in stirring up the young warriors into a determination of early attack. Only two days prior to the return of Wau-nan-gee he had been in the fort, and passing near Mrs. Ronayne as she was amusing herself at battledore with her friend, Mrs. Elmsley, remarked to a companion as he bent his eyes insolently upon her: "The white chiefs' wives are amusing themselves. They are wise. In a few days we shall have them in our wigwams."