e way up the slope, and one a little space above the other. To
the lower stake they fastened Crewe. As the girl was being bound to the
other, her arms were freed for a moment that the savages might the more
readily remove her upper garments, and by a swift movement she loosened
her hair so that it fell about her to her knees,--the splendid Neville
hair, still famous in the Province. There was no bounty then on English
scalps, and the horror of the scalping knife was not threatened them.
When the savages had made their task complete, they laughed in their
victims' faces and retreated up the steep and over the grassy rim.

"Are they gone?" asked the girl.

"No, they are lying in wait to watch us," answered Crewe; and as he
ceased speaking a muffled sound was heard, and with a sudden hubbub that
filled the chasm with clamor, the first of the flood-tide came foaming
round the curve, and the descending current halted as if in fear of the
meeting. The next moment the bed of the stream was hidden by a boiling
reddish torrent, racing up the channel; and the tide was creeping by
inches toward the captives' feet. For an hour or more the bright gulf of
death was so loud with this turmoil and with the echoes from the red
walls of mud, and the yellow eddies of foam whirled and swept so dizzily
past their eyes, that the captives' senses were dulled in a measure, as
if by some crude anodyne or vast mesmeric influence. When, however, the
channel was about one-third full and the water now beginning to cover
Crewe's feet, the flood became more quiet and equable, spreading
smoothly over freer spaces. Presently there was a frightful silence,
intensified by the steady sunlight, and broken only by the stealthy,
soft rush and snake-like hiss of the tide. Then, as Margaret's brain
grew clear in the stillness, a low cry, which tortured Crewe's features,
forced itself from her lips. She realized for the first time why the
stake to which she was bound had been set higher than her lover's. She
would watch the cruel colored water creep over Crewe's mouth, then cover
his eyes, and hide at last the brave head she had longed to kiss, ere it
climbed to ease her own lips of life. She said: "Love, I will lay my
face down in the water as soon as it is near enough, and I shall _not_
be far behind you."

A wide-winged gray gull, following the tide up the channel, gave a
startled cry as he came upon the silent figures, and rose higher, with
sudden flapping