Ned Preston stooped at the loophole, looking out over the clearing toward the Licking, from which he and Blossom Brown had made such a daring run for life and liberty. Out in the darkness beyond, he had parted from Deerfoot the Shawanoe, the Indian youth who was so deeply attached to him. Ned more than suspected his friend had given up his life for his sake. Placed, as was Deerfoot, there seemed to be no possibility of his eluding the Wyandots, who looked upon him as the worst of traitors that encumbered the earth.
"He asked me about the Great Spirit of the white man," thought Ned Preston, as he recalled that conversation over the letter which was tied to the arrow sent through the window; "and I promised I would tell him something: I feel as though I had not done my duty."
The lad was thoughtful a moment, oppressed by the remorse which comes to us when we feel we have thrown away an opportunity that may never return; but he soon rallied, as he remembered the words so often spoken by his good mother.
"God knows all hearts and he judges us aright: if Deerfoot was groping after our Great Spirit, he found him before he died, for God is so good and kind that he has gone to him, but O how glad I would be, if I could only believe Deerfoot had got away, and that I shall see him again!"
Ned Preston was roused from these gloomy reflections by the discovery that something was going on in front of him, though for some time he could not divine its character.
The uncertain light of the moon annoyed him, and prevented his learning what would have been quickly detected by Jo Stinger.
When the moon shone with unobstructed light, Ned could follow the outlines of the Wyandot warrior stretched out in death on the clearing in front: when the clouds drifted over its face, everything was swallowed in darkness.
In the mood of young Preston, a person sometimes shows a singular disposition to observe trifling details and incidents. On almost any other occasion he would not have noticed that the body of the Wyandot lay in such a position that the head was within an arm's length of a stump, while the feet was about the same distance from another.
At the moment of deepest mental depression, the boy noted this, and he muttered to himself, during the succeeding minutes, until the moon came out again from behind the clouds. Just then he was looking toward the prostrate figure, and he observed that it had shifted its position.
The head was within a few inches of a stump, while the feet were correspondingly removed from the other. The difference was so marked that there was no room for self-deception in the matter.