es were high-pitched and thin,
but from that distance they floated up soft and sweet. He could clearly
distinguish the music of the old Methodist hymn, the words of which were
quite familiar to him:

"There is a fountain filled with blood
Drawn from Immanuel's veins;
And sinners plunged beneath that flood.
Lose all their guilty stains."

Over and over again, with strange wild cadences of their own invention,
the worshippers wailed forth the refrain,

"Lose all their guilty stains."

Then, all kneeling, they went to prayer. Over all, the misty moon
struggling through the broken clouds cast a pale and ghostly light. It
was, to Cameron with his old-world religious conventions and traditions,
a weirdly fascinating but intensely impressive scene. Afar beyond the
valley, appeared in dim outline the great mountains, with their heads
thrust up into the sky. Nearer at their bases gathered the pines, at
first in solid gloomy masses, then, as they approached, in straggling
groups, and at last singly, like tall sentinels on guard. On the
grassy glade, surrounded by the sentinel pines, the circle of dusky
worshippers, kneeling about their camp fire, lifted their faces
heavenward and their hearts God-ward in prayer, and as upon those dusky
faces the firelight fell in fitful gleams, so upon their hearts, dark
with the superstitions of a hundred generations, there fell the gleams
of the torch held high by the hands of their dauntless ambassador of the
blessed Gospel of the Grace of God.

With mingled feelings of reverence and of pity Cameron stood gazing down
upon this scene, resolved more than ever to attach himself to this camp
whose days closed with evening prayer.

"Impressive scene!" said a mocking voice in his ear.

Cameron started. A sudden feeling of repulsion seized him.

"Yes," he said gravely, "an impressive scene, in my eyes at least, and I
should not wonder if in the eyes of God as well."

"Who knows?" said Raven gruffly, as they both turned back to the fire.

CHAPTER IV

THE DULL RED STAIN

The minutes passed slowly. The scene in the camp of the Stonies that he
had just witnessed drove all sleep from Cameron. He was firmly resolved
that at the first opportunity he would make his break for liberty; for
he was now fully aware that though not confessedly he was none the less
really a prisoner.

As he lay intently thinking, forming and discarding plans of escape, two
Indian