k after him too, you shall have your
lives."

The tramps were scattering so rapidly in the distance, with Simon's
bank-notes, that he gave up all idea of pursuing them.

Thus he remained master of the battle-field. Dead, wounded, or in
fight, his adversaries were defeated. The extraordinary adventure was
continuing as it were in a savage country and against the most
unexpected background.

He was profoundly conscious of the incredible moments through which he
was passing, on the bed of the Channel, between France and England, in
a region which was truly a land of death, crime, cunning and violence.
And he had triumphed!

He could not refrain from smiling and, leaning with both hands on
Forsetta's rifle, he said to Dolores:

"The prairie! It's Fenimore Cooper's prairie! The Far West! It's all
here: the attack by Sioux, the improvised blockhouse, the abduction,
the fight, with the chief of the Pale-Faces coming out victorious!
. . ."

She stood facing him, very erect. Her thin silk blouse had been torn
in the struggle and hung in strips around her bosom. Simon added, in a
tone of less assurance:

"And here's the fair Indian."

Was it emotion, or excessive fatigue after her protracted efforts?
Dolores staggered and seemed on the verge of fainting. He supported
her, holding her in his arms:

"You're surely not wounded?" he said.

"No. . . . A passing giddiness. . . . I have been badly frightened.
. . . And I had no business to be frightened, since you were there and
you had promised to save me. Oh, Simon, how grateful I am to you!"

"I have done what any one would have done in my place, Dolores. Don't
thank me."

He tried to free himself, but she held him and, after a moment's
silence, said:

"She whom the chief calls the fair Indian had a name by which she was
known in her own country. Shall I tell you what it was?"

"What was it, Dolores?"

In a low voice, without taking her eyes from his, she replied:

"The Chief's Reward!"

He had felt, in his inner consciousness, that this magnificent
creature deserved some such name, that she was truly the prey which
men seek to ravish, the captive to be saved at any cost, and that she
did indeed offer, with her red lips and her brown shoulders, the most
wonderful of rewards.

She had flung her arms about his neck; he was conscious of their
caress; and for a moment they stood like that, motionless, uncertain
of what was coming. But Isabel's image flashed acro