A low cry broke from Catharine; but one, for she seemed frozen into stone by that name. Every feature was hushed and cold; her very hands looked hard and chiselled, like marble.
The chief glanced at her, a slow fire rose and burned in his eyes. His savage heart was stung with memories to which those few cruel words had given a bitter interpretation. No king upon his throne was ever prouder than that stern chief.
“Surely, that stately old potentate was not a former lover,” said Butler, glorying in her anguish; and urged on, both by malice and self-interest, to wound that proud spirit in every possible way; but his coarseness overshot its mark—Catharine arose, bent her head in calm courtesy, and saying, in a low, sad voice:
“I cannot forget that you are my daughter’s husband,” moved quietly out of the room.
The chief arose also and left the house. He wandered in the woods all night, while she lay fainting and still as marble on her chamber floor; but the bolt was shot, and no one ever knew how terrible was the anguish of that night.
The next day Catharine and the chief recognized each other as ever. But alas! in their souls they never met again.
For weeks and months after this, Butler made his home in the Shawnee camp, till at last the war raged too hotly, and he went once more to his murderous work.
CHAPTER XVIII
WALTER BUTLER’S CAPTURE
In a lonely, deserted spot, on the outskirts of the little village called the German Flats, stood a dreary-looking board house, inhabited by a man named Shoemaker, who enjoyed the unenviable reputation of being a Tory in disguise.
One evening in the early part of the month of August, in 1777, this man and his family were gathered about their supper-table, in one of the lower rooms of the house. The heat of the weather precluded the idea of fire, but after the fashion of many farmers of that period, the hearth was filled with blazing knots of pitch pine, which served to illuminate the apartment in place of candles. The evening meal of samp and milk was just concluded, and they were moving back from the table, when a cautious knock sounded at a door in the rear of the house.