Yet despite the cruelty there, the forbidding shade on it, as if a reflection from a dark soul, it was not wholly a bad countenance.

Traces still lingered, faintly, of a man in whom kindlier feelings had once predominated.
In a moment of pique Girty had deserted his military post at Fort Pitt, and become an outlaw of his own volition.

Previous to that time he had been an able soldier, and a good fellow.

When he realized that his step was irrevocable, that even his best friends condemned him, he plunged, with anger and despair in his heart, into a war upon his own race.

Both of his brothers had long been border ruffians, whose only protection from the outraged pioneers lay in the faraway camps of hostile tribes.