you now, and make yourself handsome, and don't stand thar looking as if
the gentleman would eat you."

"A qu'ar crittur she, poor thing!" said Bruce, looking after her
commiseratingly; "and a stranger might think her no more nor half-witted.
But she has sense enough, poor crittur! and, I reckon, is just as smart,
if she war not so humble and skittish, as any of my own daughters."

"What," said Roland, "is she not then your child?"

"No, no," replied Bruce, shaking his head; "a poor crittur, of no manner
of kin whatever. Her father war an old friend, or acquaintance-like; for,
rat it, I won't own friendship for any such apostatised villians, no
how:--but the man war taken by the Shawnees; and so as thar war none to
befriend her, and she war but a little chit no bigger nor my hand, I took
to her myself and raised her. But the worst of it is, and that's what
makes her so wild and skeary, her father, Abel Doe, turned Injun himself,
like Girty, Elliot, and the rest of them refugee scoundrels you've h'ard
of. Now _that's_ enough, you see, to make the poor thing sad and
frightful; for Abel Doe is a rogue, thar's no denying, and everybody
hates and cusses him, as is but his due; and it's natteral, now she's
growing old enough to be ashamed of him, she should be ashamed of herself
too,--though thar's nothing but her father to charge against her, poor
creatur'. A bad thing for her to have an Injunised father; for if it
war'nt for him, I reckon, my son Tom, the brute, would take to her, and
marry her."

"Poor creature, indeed!" muttered Roland to himself, contrasting in
thought the condition of this helpless and deserted girl with that of his
own unfortunate kinswoman, and sighing to acknowledge that it was still