y they rose against us and slew us by
the hundred. The town was warned and is safe. Go on."

"I crept back to madam," he continued, "and hurried her away from that
dangerous neighborhood. We found a growth of bushes and hid ourselves
within it, and just in time, for from the north came a great band of
picked warriors, tall and black and wondrously feathered, fresh to the
fray, whatever the fray might be. They joined themselves to the imps
upon the river bank, and presently we heard another great din with more
firing and more yelling. Well, to make a long story short, we crouched
there in the bushes until late afternoon, not knowing what was the
matter, and not daring to venture forth to find out. The woman of the
cabin at which we had slept had given us a packet of bread and meat, so
we were not without food, but the time was long. And then of a sudden
the wood around us was filled with the heathen, band after band, coming
from the river, stealing like serpents this way and that into the depths
of the forest. They saw us not in the thick bushes; maybe it was because
of the prayers which I said with might and main. At last the distance
swallowed them, the forest seemed clear, no sound, no motion. Long we
waited, but with the sunset we stole from the bushes and down an aisle
of the forest toward the river, rounded a little wood of cedar, and
came full upon perhaps fifty of the savages"--He paused to draw a great
breath and to raise his brows after a fashion that he had.

"Go on, go on!" I cried. "What did you do? You have said that she is
alive and safe!"

"She is," he answered, "but no thanks to me, though I did set lustily
upon that painted fry. Who led them, d' ye think, Ralph? Who saved us
from those bloody hands?"

A light broke in upon me. "I know," I said. "And he brought you here"--

"Ay, he sent away the devils whose color he is, worse luck! He told us
that there were Indians, not of his tribe, between us and the town. If
we went on we should fall into their hands. But there was a place that
was shunned by the Indian as by the white man: we could bide there until
the morrow, when we might find the woods clear. He guided us to this
dismal wood that was not altogether strange to us. Ay, he told her that
you were alive. He said no more than that; all at once, when we were
well within the wood and the twilight was about us, he was gone."

He ceased to speak, and stood regarding me with a smile upon his rugged
f