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OR long minutes the two girls and their mother stood there, minutes that seemed like months, that seemed like years. Then Squire Condit's voice hailed them from the dooryard and soon, as Mistress Condit took the candle that Mehitable had brought her and held it aloft, they saw him staggering toward them half-carrying, half-dragging a human form.

"Wine, Mary, for this poor fellow!" he gasped, stumbling past her into the kitchen.

As the firelight flashed upon the still figure their father had placed upon the floor, the two girls drew back with exclamations of fear.

"An Indian, Father?" faltered Mehitable.

"Aye—an Indian! But a human being like you or me, Hitty, and as such, subject to death as we!" answered her father reprovingly.

"Poor Indian!" said Charity immediately, in her gentle voice. Then she shrank back, for at that instant the Indian's eyes flew open and he stared at her with the uncanny alertness of a wild wood-thing caught in a trap.

"Here, take a sip of this, my man," said Squire Condit, raising the Indian's head to the pewter mug