The renegade stood a few seconds, and then began striding up and down in front of the camp-fire, indulging in imprecations too frightful to be recorded.
All this time Mr. Brainerd was so delighted that he forgot his own grief. He knew how great was the disappointment of the man, and he was pleased thereat, for, recalling the chastisement received from the hands of Aunt Peggy, it can be safely said that matters had gone ill with Golcher, since the lady began cooking for her captors.
By and by he exhausted himself, and then paused in front of Habakkuk McEwen and demanded:
"Why didn't you stop him when you seen him running away?"
"I didn't see him," was the truthful reply of the fellow, who was mean enough to add: "If I had, you can just bet I'd stopped him, even if my hands was tied."
"Why didn't you yell for me as soon as you found out he had gone?"
"I did yell," was the unblushing answer, "but there was so much confusion nobody noticed me, and the Injins was off after him as quick as he started."
"Just then Aunt Peggy was attending to you," Mr. Brainerd remarked, "and you were so badly used up that you wouldn't have noticed an earthquake had it come along."
Maggie looked beseechingly at her father, while the Tory glowered on him like a thunder-cloud.
But for his anxiety to win the good will of the pretty maiden, he would have struck down her parent where he stood. The latter acted as though he had given up all hope, and was trying to retaliate to some extent on him whom he detested.