“But what do you think it is?”
“I reckon it’s the devil,” said the renegade, solemnly.
CHAPTER III.
A TIMELY SHOT.
From one of the largest of the dwellings that composed the little frontier settlement of Point Pleasant came a young girl.
She was about sixteen, and was as pretty as one of the wild flowers that bloom unseen amid the rocky ravines through which ran the tumultuous Kanawha.
Dark-brown hair rippled in wavy masses back from her olive-tinged brow, browned by exposure to the free winds of the wilderness and the sunbeams that danced so merrily over the surface of the rolling river.
The bright color in the cheeks of the girl, her free step, that possessed all the grace and lightness of the bounding fawn, told of perfect health, as also did the sparkling brown eyes and rose-red lips that seemed to hold such dewy sweetness in their graceful curves.
The maiden was known as Virginia Treveling. She was the daughter of General Lemuel Treveling, a man who had great experience as an Indian-fighter on the Western border, and who had settled down in Point Pleasant, and was reputed to be by far the wealthiest man in all the country around.
So, by virtue of her father’s wealth, as well as by the aid of her own beauty, Virginia Treveling was the belle of the station known as Point Pleasant.