made
the great hole in his head, and so he twitched and died. After that a
confusion of shots, war-whoops, a vision of two naked forms flying from
tree to tree towards the cane, and then--God be praised--Tom's voice
shouting:--

"Polly Ann! Polly Ann!"

Before she had reached the top of the bank Tom had her in his arms,
and a dozen tall gray figures leaped the six feet into the stream and
stopped. My own eyes turned with theirs to see the body of poor Weldon
lying face downward in the water. But beyond it a tragedy awaited me.
Defiant, immovable, save for the heaving of his naked chest, the savage
who had killed him stood erect with folded arms facing us. The smoke
cleared away from a gleaming rifle-barrel, and the brave staggered and
fell and died as silent as he stood, his feathers making ripples in the
stream. It was cold-blooded, if you like, but war in those days was to
the death, and knew no mercy. The tall backwoodsman who had shot him
waded across the stream, and in the twinkling of an eye seized the
scalp-lock and ran it round with his knife, holding up the bleeding
trophy with a shout. Staggering to my feet, I stretched myself, but I
had been cramped so long that I tottered and would have fallen had not
Tom's hand steadied me.

"Davy!" he cried. "Thank God, little Davy! the varmints didn't get ye."

"And you, Tom?" I answered, looking up at him, bewildered with
happiness.

"They was nearer than I suspicioned when I went off," he said,
and looked at me curiously. "Drat the little deevil," he said
affectionately, and his voice trembled, "he took care of Polly Ann, I'll
warrant."

He carried me to the top of the bank, where we were surrounded by the
whole band of backwoodsmen.

"That he did!" cried Polly Ann, "and fetched a redskin yonder as clean
as you could have done it, Tom."

"The little deevil!" exclaimed Tom again.

I looked up, burning with this praise from Tom (for I had never thought
of praise nor of anything save his happiness and Polly Ann's). I looked
up, and my eyes were caught and held with a strange fascination by
fearless blue ones that gazed down into them. I give you but a poor
description of the owner of these blue eyes, for personal magnetism
springs not from one feature or another. He was a young man,--perhaps
five and twenty as I now know age,--woodsman-clad, square-built,
sun-reddened. His hair might have been orange in one light and
sand-colored in another. With a boy's sense