ened
lodges. Surely, daylight though it was, no safer moment could be
expected in which to establish communication with Toinette. With night
the camp would be again astir; and even if I succeeded in reaching her
at some later hour it would leave small margin of darkness for our
escape. Every moment of delay now added to our grave peril, and there
was much planning to be done after we met. Possibly I should have
waited, as I had been told to do; but it was ever in my blood to act
rather than reason, and I am sure that in this case no cause remains
for regret.

I must confess that my heart beat somewhat faster, as I crept slowly
forth and peered cautiously around the bulging side of the big lodge I
had just left, to assure myself no savages were stirring. It was not
that I greatly feared the venture, nor that a sense of danger excited
my nerves; but rather the one thought in my mind was that now my way
lay toward Mademoiselle. How would she greet me? Should I learn my
fate from her tell-tale eyes, or by a sudden gleam of surprise in her
lovely face? These were the reflections that inspired me, for a new
hope had been born within me through the forced confession of De Croix.

There was little danger of exposure while I advanced through the
shelter of the lodges, for I was always under partial cover. But I
waited and watched long before daring to pass across the wide open
space in the centre of which the fire had been kindled. The
torture-post yet stood there, black and charred, while the ground
beneath was littered with dead ashes. The bodies of three white men,
two of them naked and marked by fire, lay close at hand, just as they
had been carelessly flung aside to make room for new victims; yet I
dared not stop to learn who they might have been in life. The sight of
their foul disfigurement only rendered me the more eager to reach the
living with a message of hope.

I moved like a snake, dragging my body an inch at a time by firmly
grasping with extended hands the tough grass-roots, and writhing
forward as noiselessly as if I were stalking some prey. There were
times when I advanced so slowly it would have puzzled a watcher to
determine whether mine was not also the body of the dead. At length,
even at that snail's rate of progress, I gained the protection of the
tepees upon the other side of the camp, and skulked in among them. The
lodge just before me, blackened by paint and weather, must be the one I