here you are condemned. Again, because I stopped you
from shooting that wretched chief and his companions they are now
demanding your life as a forfeit. It is all my fault. I cannot bear
it."

She was on the verge of tears. The strain had become too great for her.
After indulging in a wild dream of freedom, to be told that they must
again endure the irksome confinement, the active suffering, the slow
horrors of a siege in that rocky prison, almost distracted her.

Jenks was very stern and curt in his reply.

"We must make the best of a bad business," he said. "If we are in a
tight place the Dyaks are not much better off, and eighteen of their
number are dead or wounded. You forget, too, that Providence has sent
us a most useful ally in the Mahommedan. When all is said and done,
things might be far worse than they are."

Never before had his tone been so cold, his manner so abrupt, not even
in the old days when he purposely endeavored to make her dislike him.

She walked along the ledge and timidly bent over him.

"Forgive me!" she whispered; "I did forget for the moment, not only the
goodness of Providence, but also your self-sacrificing devotion. I am
only a woman, and I don't want to die yet, but I will not live unless
you too are saved."

Once already that day she had expressed this thought in other words.
Was some shadowy design flitting through her brain? Suppose they were
faced with the alternatives of dying from thirst or yielding to the
Dyaks. Was there another way out? Jenks shivered, though the rock was
grilling him. He must divert her mind from this dreadful brooding.

"The fact is," he said with a feeble attempt at cheerfulness, "we are
both hungry and consequently grumpy. Now, suppose you prepare lunch. We
will feel ever so much better after we have eaten."

The girl choked back her emotion, and sadly essayed the task of
providing a meal which was hateful to her. In doing so she saw her
Bible, lying where she had placed it that morning, the leaves still
open at the 91st Psalm. She had indeed forgotten the promise it
contained--

"For He shall give His angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy
ways."

A few tears fell now and made little furrows down her soiled cheeks.
But they were helpful tears, tears of resignation, not of despair.
Although the "destruction that wasteth at noonday" was trying her
sorely she again felt strong and sustained.

She even smiled on detecting an involuntar