A bitterly cold night was closing in when Ree reached the cabin.

“I rather guess there will be no prowlers around this evening,” he remarked, as he shook the snow from his coonskin cap in front of the roaring fireplace, and held his hands to the blaze to warm them.

“Ree,” said John, ignoring the remark, “Mr. Hatch wants a feather bed. We were talking about it as you came in. I told him we could make him one from turkey feathers.”

“So we can,” was the answer. “We’ll begin saving feathers right away.”
182

“It is because I have decided to remain here until I can go in quest of the rascals who have the missing part of my aunt’s letter,” the Quaker put in, very seriously. “For poor Ichabod is dead—dead and gone—and the money, lads, is mine—all mine. Oh, I must obtain the paper which was stolen from me! All mine—the money and all—it is all mine,” he murmured, and from time to time repeated—“All mine—all mine!”

Much thinking of the hidden treasure and his assertion that he was the only creature known to be alive who had any valid claim to the fortune, seemed fast to be making Theodore Hatch a covetous, disagreeable old man. He had changed wonderfully in the short time since the boys had known him.

“Thou shalt stay as long as we do, if thou likest, friend,” said Ree, adopting the Quaker manner of speaking. “But the Indians have fought a great battle near the Wabash river and sadly defeated General St. Clair and his troops. What the result will be as concerns ourselves, we must wait and see.”
183

“What’s that?” John exclaimed.

All that he had learned from Gentle Maiden, Ree then told his friends, and he told them also of the destitute circumstances in which he found the people still remaining in Captain Pipe’s village.

There arose in John’s mind at once the same question that had perplexed Ree—should they help these needy Indians, while those who ought to be at home providing for them were fighting the white troops and, no doubt, killing settlers and plundering and burning their cabins?

“After all, we can’t let the poor Redskins starve,” he said at last.

“Just what I said to myself on the way home,” Ree replied.
184

Theodore Hatch had risen and was walking up and down the one tiny room of the cabin, despondent and deeply sorrowing, as was usual with him when he heard news of bloodshed. He spoke no word, but at last, still deep in thought, laid himself down upon his bed and buried his face in the coarse pillow formed in part by his closely-watched saddle bags. His position had not changed when the two boys were ready to go to bed, and, thinking he slept, they covered him over with a blanket and bearskin.

All night the wind howled through the valley of the Cuyahoga, bending the strongest limbs of the forest trees and snapping dead branches off short with a sudden crackling which added to the threatening noises all about. All night the snow went flying before the gale, piling itself in drifts upon the log doorstep of the lonely cabin, against every fallen tree and against every rock and bluff for miles around,—in the haunted spot where the sunken eyes of the dead Black Eagle stared upward through their mantle of white, and beside the smoky hut where Gentle Maiden knelt before the fire and besought the Great Spirit to send aid to her father’s people.
185

All night the storm raged and even the dismal voices of the wolves were stilled and they slunk into their cavern homes; so much the safer were the timid deer seeking shelter among the low-boughed trees of the ravines. All night the troubled Quaker lay face downward upon his bed, his mind struggling between his love for gold and his wish to do right. On their own bed in the corner, Return Kingdom and John Jerome soundly slept or, partially awakened from time to time by the fierceness of the tempest, dreamed the hours away.

The coming of morning showed the hours of darkness to have been very busy ones for the storm king.

“I think we will not be venturing far from the cabin to-day,” said John, looking out.

“Lucky there is no need of doing so,” Ree answered.

“Dear friends”—it was the Quaker who spoke, and his voice was strangely soft and low, reminding the boys at once of the caressing way in which he always addressed his mare, Ph?be—“whatever the depth of snow or the cold, I am going to the town of the Delawares to carry them whatever food thee will spare me for them.”
186

“Why, you mustn’t think of doing so, Mr. Hatch,” said Ree. “I do not believe the Indians are really suffering, as yet.”

“They need food, and more than food for their bodies merely,” was the answer. “They are but ignorant savages, but bravely they are bearing all the suffering which comes to them because their strong men have gone forth to fight for what they righteously believe to be their own; and I shall go among them, and even as our illustrious William Penn would do were he alive and here, I shall both feed and teach them.”

Some great change had come over Theodore Hatch. But the day before he would have shown but little interest in any subject save that of the hidden fortune. Now he did not mention it, but bundled up and visited the log stable adjoining the cabin to tell Ph?be his plans, as he had so often told the gentle animal of the treasure, saying over and over again, “All mine—all mine.”
187

The depth of the snow was so great and the way so difficult that, finding the Quaker determined to follow out the plan he had formed, the two boys agreed that Ree should accompany him, mounted on Neb, while Mr. Hatch rode his own horse. With a generous supply of provisions, therefore, the two set out, leaving John alone to guard the cabin and the Quaker’s prized saddle bags, and to cut and store near the house a stock of wood for the fireplace.

Well-nigh buried beneath the snow, Ree and his companion found the village of the Delawares a desolate place indeed, upon their arrival there after nearly three hours of floundering through great drifts and over fallen trees and brush, the trail being so hidden by its spotless cloak that to follow it closely was quite impossible.
188

The meat the white men carried to the Indians, however, was really badly needed. It became evident at once that the whole truth had not been revealed to Ree by Gentle Maiden—because of her pride, perhaps—and several of the oldest and most feeble of the Indian men and women were genuinely sick solely for want of food. The children, too, though bearing their suffering with true Indian grit,—not a cry or whimper escaping them,—were most desperately hungry.

“Our dogs knew our distress and their danger, and our women could not come near to them to kill one for eating. Always did they run away, howling or sometimes almost speaking words of fear—or—or woe,” said Gentle Maiden, telling of the suffering of her father’s people, while Ree and Mr. Hatch warmed themselves at the fire in the chief’s cabin. At the same time the girl’s mother was carrying more wood to make a brighter blaze, and the hungry Delawares were feeding themselves ravenously in their own cabins or beside a fire built near the center of the space the irre............