you volunteer?" There was a little smile at the
corner of Stuart's lip as he looked at her steadily.

"No, no, I protest," cried Demere. "Tell her first what she is to do."

"No," said Stuart, "when you agreed to the plan you expressly stipulated
that you were to have no responsibility. Now if Mrs. MacLeod volunteers
it is as a soldier and unquestioningly under orders."

"It is sudden," hesitated Odalie. "May I tell my husband?"

"Would he allow you to risk yourself?" asked Stuart. "And yet it is for
yourself, your husband, your child, the garrison,--to save all our
lives, God willing."

Odalie's color rose, her eyes grew bright. "I know I can trust you to
make the risk as slight as it may be,--to place me in no useless danger.
I volunteer."

The two men looked at her for one moment, their hearts in their eyes.

Then Captain Stuart broke out with his reassuring raillery. "I always
knew it,--such a proclivity for the military life! In the king's service
at last."

Odalie laughed, but Captain Demere could not compass a smile.

Stuart's next question she thought a bit of his fun. "Have you here," he
said, with deep gravity, "some stout gown, fashioned with plaits and
fullness in the skirt, and a cape or fichu,--is that what you call
it,--about the shoulders? And, yes,--that large red hood, calash, that
you wore the first day you arrived at the fort,"--his ready smile
flickered,--"on an understanding so little pleasing to your taste. Go
get them on, and meet me at the northwestern bastion."

The young soldier, Daniel Eske, still standing guard in the block-house
tower, looked out on a scene without incident. The river shone in the
clear June daylight; the woods were dark, and fresh with dew and deeply
green, and so dense that they showed no token of broken boughs and riven
hole, results of the cannonade they had sustained, which still served to
keep at a distance, beyond the range of the guns, the beleaguering
cordon of savages, and thus prevent surprise or storm. Nevertheless
there were occasional lurking Indians, spies, or stragglers from the
main line, amongst the dense boughs of the blooming rhododendron; he saw
from time to time skulking painted faces and feathers fluttering from
lordly scalp-locks, which rendered so much the more serious and probable
the imputation of communicating with the enemy that the presence and
gestures of Choo-qualee-qualoo, still lingering there, had contrived to
throw upon him. H