ows
rip against the skin shields. Running fugitives fall pierced. Men
rush from their lodges in the daze of sleep and fight barehanded
against musket and battle-axe and lance till the snows are red and
scalps steaming from the belts of conquerors. Women fall to the feet
of the victors, kneeling, crouching, dumbly pleading for mercy; and the
mercy is a spear-thrust that pinions the living body to earth. Maimed,
helpless and living victims are thrown aside to await slow death.
Children are torn from their mothers' arms--but there--memory revolts
and the pen fails!

It was in vain for us to flee. Turn where we would, pursued and
pursuer were there.

"Don't flinch! Don't flinch!" Godefroy kept shouting. "They'll take
it for fear! They'll kill you by torture!"

Almost on the words a bowstring twanged to the fore and a young girl
stumbled across Jack Battle's feet with a scream that rings, and rings,
and rings in memory like the tocsin of a horrible dream. She was
wounded in the shoulder. Getting to her knees she threw her arms round
Jack with such a terrified look of helpless pleading in her great eyes
as would have moved stone.

"Don't touch her! Don't touch her! Don't touch her!" screamed
Godefroy, jerking to pull Jack free. "It will do no good! Don't help
her! They'll kill you both--"

"Great God!" sobbed Jack, with shivering horror, "I can't help helping
her--"

But there leaped from the mist a figure with uplifted spear.

May God forgive it, but I struck that man dead!

It was a bootless sacrifice at the risk of three lives. But so was
Christ's a bootless sacrifice at the time, if you measure deeds by
gain. And so has every sacrifice worthy of the name been a bootless
sacrifice, if you stop to weigh life in a goldsmith's scale!

Justice is blind; but praise be to God, so is mercy!

And, indeed, I have but quoted our Lord and Saviour, not as an example,
but as a precedent. For the act I merited no credit. Like Jack, I
could not have helped helping her. The act was out before the thought.

Then we were back to back fighting a horde of demons.

Godefroy fought cursing our souls to all eternity for embroiling him in
peril. Jack Battle fought mumbling feverishly, deliriously,
unconscious of how he shot or what he said--"Might as well die here as
elsewhere! Might as well die here as elsewhere! Damn that Indian!
Give it to him, Ramsay! You shoot while I prime! Might as well die
here as