n of the
buffalo-meat; when the years were filled with hunting and war and
migrant journeyings to fresh game-grounds and pastures new.

Danger faced was the one thing which could restore Tekewani's
self-respect, after he had been checked and rebuked before his tribe by
the Indian Commissioner for being drunk. Danger faced had restored it,
and Fleda Druse had brought the danger to him as a gift.

If the canoe should crash against the piers of the bridge, if it should
drift to the cataract below, if anything should happen to this white
girl whom he worshipped in his heathen way, nothing could preserve his
self-respect; he would pour ashes on his head and firewater down his
throat.

Suddenly he and his braves stood still. They watched as one would watch
an enemy a hundred times stronger than one's self. The white man's skiff
was near the derelict canoe; the bridge was near also. Carillon now
lined the bank of the river with its people. They ran upon the bridge,
but not so fast as to reach the place where, in the nick of time,
Ingolby got possession of the rolling canoe; where Fleda Druse lay
waiting like a princess to be waked by the kiss of destiny.

Only five hundred yards below the bridge was the second cataract, and
she would never have waked if she had been carried into it.

To Ingolby she was as beautiful as a human being could be as she lay
with white face upturned, the paddle still in her hand.

"Drowning isn't good enough for her," he said, as he fastened her canoe
to his skiff.

"It's been a full day's work," he added; and even in this human crisis
he thought of the fish he had caught, of "the big trouble," he had been
thinking out as Osterhaut had said, as well as of the girl that he was
saving.

"I always have luck when I go fishing," he added presently. "I can take
her back to Lebanon," he continued with a quickening look. "She'll be
all right in a jiffy. I've got room for her in my buggy--and room for
her in any place that belongs to me," he hastened to reflect with a
curious, bashful smile.

"It's like a thing in a book," he murmured, as he neared the waiting
people on the banks of Carillon, and the ringing of the vesper bells
came out to him on the evening air.

"Is she dead?" some one whispered, as eager hands reached out to secure
his skiff to the bank.

"As dead as I am," he answered with a laugh, and drew Fleda's canoe up
alongside his skiff.

He had a strange sensation of new life, as,