et Virginia go down and
be delivered over to painted savages, and some day soon we will win it
back; but we cannot bring life to the dead. I want to save the lowland
manors from what befell the D'Aubignys on the Rapidan, and if I can
only do that much I will be content. Will you counsel me, Ringan, to
neglect my plain duty?"

"I gave no counsel," said Ringan hurriedly. "I was only putting the
common sense of it. It's for you to choose."

Here Grey broke in. "I protest against this craziness. Your first duty
is to your comrades and to this lady. If you desert us we lose our best
musket, and you have as little chance of reaching the Tidewater as the
moon. Arc you so madly enamoured of death, Mr. Garvald?" He spoke in
the old stiff tones of the man I had quarrelled with.

I turned to Shalah. "Is there any hope of getting to the South Fork?"

He looked me very full in the face. "As much hope as a dove has who
falls broken-winged into an eyrie of falcons! As much hope as the deer
when the hunter's knife is at its throat! Yet the dove may escape, and
the deer may yet tread the forest. While a man draws breath there is
hope, brother."

"Which I take to mean that the odds are a thousand against one," said
Grey.

"Then it's my business to stake all on the one," I cried. "Man, don't
you see my quandary? I hold a solemn trust, which I have the means of
fulfilling, and I'm bound to try. It's torture to me to leave you, but
you will lose nothing. Three men could hold this place as well as six,
if the Indians are not in earnest, and, if they are, a hundred would be
too few. Your danger will be starvation, and I will be a mouth less to
feed. If I get to the Border I will find help, for we cannot stay here
for ever, and how d'you think we are to get Miss Blair by ourselves to
the Rappahannock with every mile littered with fighting clans? I must
go, or I will never have another moment's peace in life."
Grey was not convinced. "Send the Indian," he said.

"And leave the stockade defenceless," I cried. "It's because he stays
behind that I dare to go. Without him we are all bairns in the dark."

"That's true, anyway," said Ringan, and fell to whittling a stick.

"For three days," I continued, "you have food enough, and if by the end
of it you are not attacked you may safely go hunting for more. If
nothing happens in a week's time you will know that I have failed, and
you can send another messenger. Ringan would be the best."