But I do not think she heard me. She had checked her tears, but her
wits were far away, grieving for her uncle's pain, and envisaging the
desperate future. At the first water we reached she bathed her face and
eyes, and using the pool as a mirror, adjusted her hair. Then she
smiled bravely, "I will try to be a true comrade, like a man," she
said. "I think I will be stronger when I have slept a little."

All that afternoon we stole from covert to covert. It was hot and
oppressive in the dense woods, where the breeze could not penetrate.
Shalah's eagle eyes searched every open space before we crossed, but we
saw nothing to alarm us. In time we came to the place where we had left
our party, and it was easy enough to pick up their road. They had
travelled slowly, keeping to the thickest trees, and they had taken no
pains to cover their tracks, for they had argued that if trouble came
it would come from the front, and that it was little likely that any
Indian would be returning thus soon and could take up their back trail.

Presently we came to a place where the bold spurs of the hills overhung
us, and the gap we had seen opened up into a deep valley. Shalah went
in advance, and suddenly we heard a word pass. We entered a cedar
glade, to find our four companions unsaddling the horses and making
camp.

The sight of the girl held them staring. Grey grew pale and then
flushed scarlet. He came forward and asked me abruptly what it meant.
When I told him he bit his lips.

"There is only one thing to be done," he said. "We must take Miss Blair
back to the Tidewater. I insist, sir. I will go myself. We cannot
involve her in our dangers."

He was once again the man I had wrangled with. His eyes blazed, and he
spoke in a high tone of command. But I could not be wroth with him;
indeed, I liked him for his peremptoriness. It comforted me to think
that Elspeth had so warm a defender.

I nodded to Shalah. "Tell him," I said, and Shalah spoke with him. He
took long to convince, but at, the end he said no more, and went to
speak to Elspeth. I could see that she lightened his troubled mind a
little, for, having accepted her fate, she was resolute to make the
best of it, I even heard her laugh.

That night we made her a bower of green branches, and as we ate our
supper round our modest fire she sat like a queen among us. It was odd
to see the way in which her presence affected each of us. With her Grey
was the courtly cavalier, read