She said that she would, and with a parting smile she left me.

For what seemed many hours I awaited her return, chafing with
impatience. The afternoon wore on and night came, and yet no one came
near me. My captors brought me neither food nor water. I was
suffering considerable pain where the rawhide thongs cut into my
swollen flesh. I thought that they had either forgotten me, or that it
was their intention to leave me here to die of starvation.

Once I heard a great uproar in the village. Men were shouting--women
were screaming and moaning. After a time this subsided, and again
there was a long interval of silence.

Half the night must have been spent when I heard a sound in the trench
near the hut. It resembled muffled sobs. Presently a figure appeared,
silhouetted against the lesser darkness beyond the doorway. It crept
inside the hut.

"Are you here?" whispered a childlike voice.

It was Mary! She had returned. The thongs no longer hurt me. The
pangs of hunger and thirst disappeared. I realized that it had been
loneliness from which I suffered most.

"Mary!" I exclaimed. "You are a good girl. You have come back, after
all. I had commenced to think that you would not. Did you give my
message to the queen? Will she come? Where is she?"

The child's sobs increased, and she flung herself upon the dirt floor
of the hut, apparently overcome by grief.

"What is it?" I asked. "Why do you cry?"

"The queen, my mother, will not come to you," she said, between sobs.
"She is dead. Buckingham has killed her. Now he will take Victory,
for Victory is queen. He kept us fastened up in our shelter, for fear
that Victory would escape him, but I dug a hole beneath the back wall
and got out. I came to you, because you saved Victory once before, and
I thought that you might save her again, and me, also. Tell me that
you will."

"I am bound and helpless, Mary," I replied. "Otherwise I would do what
I could to save you and your sister."

"I will set you free!" cried the girl, creeping up to my side. "I will
set you free, and then you may come and slay Buckingham."

"Gladly!" I assented.

"We must hurry," she went on, as she fumbled with the hard knots in the
stiffened rawhide, "for Buckingham will be after you soon. He must
make an offering to the lions at dawn before he can take Victory. The
taking of a queen requires a human offering!"

"And I am to be the offering?" I asked.

"Yes," she