CHAPTER XII.
The Cottage in the Grove—The Disguise—Back to Health—Impatience—Searching the Box—Antoinette La Clair's Story.
Very sad and dreary seemed the hours to Antoinette La Clair, as she watched by Little Wolf's bed side. While her loving hand bathed the burning brow, and her soft musical voice soothed the wild ravings of the invalid, she thought much upon the strange loneliness of their situation. Day after day passed by, and no living soul approached the cottage. She often wondered why it's owner came not, and it was a mystery to her, why Bloody Jim had not discovered their retreat.
From the first, she had taken the precaution whenever she appeared outside to disguise herself in the various articles of clothing, which she found strewn about the house, and, as she went to procure water from the spring, which was at some distance from the house, she would assume the air and gait of a logy country boy. Her sun-burnt straw hat with its crown piece flapping about in the wind; great coarse boots slipping hither and thither on her little feet and her other generally loose fitting attire would, but for her absorbing anxiety, have excited rather more than a smile on her usually melancholly countenance.
It was well that the fact of having remained unmolested for nearly three weeks did not lesson her vigilance on one eventful occasion. It was about sun rise; as she was toiling up the eminence with a heavy bucket of water, which an occasional mis-step would send splashing over her great awkward boots, she saw a man approaching the spring. It was Ketchum; and, as she recognized him, her breath came quicker and she hurried onward and upward. She had nearly reached the top of the hill when she heard him calling out,
"Hello there, boy!"
She turned round, sat down her bucket and stood in a listening attitude.
"I say boy, who lives yonder?"
"I du," she replied in exact imitation of backwoodsman twang, and, taking a step or two downward, she stooped forward and appeared to be attentively eyeing her new acquaintance.
"Be you the man they're looking fur?" she at length drawled out.