meeting inside the fort, where a belt of wampum--the sign of amity--should be presented by the chief and everything done that might promote friendly relations. Suspecting nothing, Gladwyn assented, and Pontiac's scheme seemed sure of fruition. It chanced, however, that among the Ojibwas was a beautiful girl, named Catherine, and that she came under the notice of Gladwyn. He was enamored of her beauty and proposed to her to become his mistress; and she, honored by the notice of the handsome Englishman, yielded to his desire. It would seem that at first the girl did not know that evil threatened the British; but one evening, when she came to the fort to visit her lover, she was noticed by him to be absent and sad. At first she would not tell him the reason of her grief; but at last, urged by her love to treachery to her own people, she told him that the Indians had been engaged in filing off the barrels of their rifles so that they could conceal these weapons beneath their cloaks, and that the next day, when the peace conference was to be held, the presentation by Pontiac of the belt of wampum was to be the signal for the armed warriors to rise upon the unsuspecting and weaponless officers in a massacre which should become general when the gates of the fort had been seized by those deputed for the purpose. Gladwyn was not the man to neglect such a warning; and the next day, when Pontiac, surrounded by his apparently peaceful but really armed warriors, was about to hand the wampum belt to Gladwyn, a drum beat, the doors of the council chamber were thrown open, and there appeared at every entrance a file of soldiers with levelled muskets, while in the streets was heard the tramp of marching men hurriedly assembling at the point of danger. Pontiac saw that he was betrayed, and, with quick presence of mind, concluded his speech with some words of friendship, and sat down without having made the intended signal; but Gladwyn, less tactful than the Indian, boldly accused the latter of treachery and dared him to do his worst. He did not, however, take the obvious course of securing the person of Pontiac, who was allowed to depart and who at once began a siege which for vigor and ability is hardly surpassed in the annals even of civilized warfare. The narrative of the siege of Detroit and the fate of the brave and able chief who conducted it have no connection with the subject of this work; but the incident of the preservation of the fort from Pontiac's ingenious plot is germane to the matter in hand. Had the Indians been successful in their scheme, it is not at all impossible that France would have made another attempt to maintain her footing in North America; and thus it might be said with some show of reason that Gladwyn's immorality was the cause of the consummation of British dominance in North America, and that an obscure Indian girl saved for England a possession which that country had bought at the price of some of her noblest blood.