deliberate downpour from the hills.

As we lay there, scarce daring to breathe, I saw that we were in deadly
peril. The host was so great that some marched on the very edge of our
thicket. I could see through the leaves the brown Skins not a yard
away. The slightest noise would bring the sharp Indian eyes peering
into the gloom, and we must be betrayed.

In that moment, which was one of the gravest of my life, I had happily
no leisure to think of myself. My whole soul sickened with anxiety for
the girl. I knew enough of Indian ways to guess her fate. For Shalah
and myself there might be torture, and at the best an arrow in our
hearts, but for her there would be things unspeakable. I remembered the
little meadow on the Rapidan, and the tale told by the grey ashes.
There was only one shot in my pistol, but I determined that it should
be saved for her. In such a crisis the memory works wildly, and I
remember feeling glad that I had stood up before Grey's fire. The
thought gave me a comforting assurance of manhood.

Those were nightmare minutes. The girl was very quiet, in a stupor of
fatigue and fear. Shalah was a graven image, and I was too tensely
strung to have any of the itches and fervours which used to vex me in
hunting the deer when stillness was needful. Through the fretted
greenery, I saw the dim shadows of men passing swiftly. The thought of
the horse worried me. If the confounded beast grazed peaceably down the
other side of the hill, all might be well. So long as he was out of
sight any movement he made would be set down by the Indians to some
forest beast, for animals' noises are all alike in a wood. But if he
returned to us, there would be the devil to pay, for at a glimpse of
him our thicket would be alive with the enemy.

In the end I found it best to shut my eyes and commend our case to our
Maker. Then I counted very slowly to myself up to four hundred, and
looked again. The vale was empty.

We lay still, hardly believing in our deliverance, for the matter of a
quarter of an hour, and then Shalah, making a sign to me to remain,
turned and glided up lull. I put my hand behind me, found Elspeth's
cheek, and patted it. She stretched out a hand and clutched mine
feverishly, and thus we remained till, after what seemed an age, Shalah
returned.

He was on his feet and walking freely. He had found the horse, too, and
had it by the bridle.

"The danger is past," he said gravely. "Let us go back to the glad