"I'm afeared they've all gone under. I were here a week afterward; it were just as it is now. I found the three hands lying killed and sculped in the fields; the others, I reckon, is there. I has no doubt at all about Bill Welch and his wife, but it may be that the gal has been carried off."

"Do you think so?" Harold exclaimed eagerly. "If so, we may find her, too, with the other."

"What other?" Pearson, asked.

Harold gave briefly an account of the reason which had brought them to the spot and of the object they had in view.

"You can count me in," Pearson said. "There's just a chance that Nelly Welch may be in their hands still; and in any case I'm longing to draw a bead on some of the varmints to pay 'em for this," and he looked round him, "and a hundred other massacres round this frontier."

"I'm glad to hear ye say so," Peter replied. "I expected as much of ye, Jack. I don't know much of this country, having only hunted here for a few weeks with a party of Delawares twenty year afore the Iroquois moved so far west."