"Indeed, you always seemed happy."
"Father, I am happy. It's only—only a girl's foolish sentiment."
"I've got something to tell you, Helen, and it has bothered me since
Colonel Zane spoke of it to-night. Mordaunt is coming to Fort Henry."
"Mordaunt? Oh, impossible! Who said so? How did you learn?"
"I fear 'tis true, my dear. Colonel Zane told me he had heard of an Englishman at Fort Pitt who asked after us. Moreover, the fellow answers the description of Mordaunt. I am afraid it is he, and come after you."
"Suppose he has—who cares? We owe him nothing. He cannot hurt us."
"But, Helen, he's a desperate man. Aren't you afraid of him?"
"Not I," cried Helen, laughing in scorn. "He'd better have a care. He can't run things with a high hand out here on the border. I told him I would have none of him, and that ended it."
"I'm much relieved. I didn't want to tell you; but it seemed necessary. Well, child, good night, I'll go to bed."
Long after Mr. Sheppard had retired Helen sat thinking. Memories of the past, and of the unwelcome suitor, Mordaunt, thronged upon her thick and fast. She could see him now with his pale, handsome face, and distinguished bearing. She had liked him, as she had other men, until he involved her father, with himself, in financial ruin, and had made his attention to her unpleasantly persistent. Then he had followed the fall of fortune with wild dissipation, and became a gambler and a drunkard. But he did not desist in his mad wooing. He became like her shadow, and life grew to be unendurable, until her father planned to emigrate west, when she hailed the news with joy. And now Mordaunt had tracked her to her new home. She was sick with disgust. Then her spirit, always strong, and now freer for this new, wild life of the frontier, rose within her, and she dismissed all thoughts of this man and his passion.