hrough it. "We might make a
rush from the gates and stampede them," he presently added. Then he
uttered an exclamation of great surprise.

"There's Lieutenant Beverley out there," he exclaimed.

"You're mistaken, you're excited," Hamilton half sneeringly remarked,
yet not without a shade of uneasiness in his expression. "You forget,
sir."

"Look for yourself, it's easily settled," and Farnsworth proffered the
glass. "He's there, to a certainty, sir."

"I saw Beverley an hour ago," said Helm. "I knew all the time that he'd
be on hand."

It was a white lie. Captain Helm was as much surprised as his captors
at what he heard; but he could not resist the temptation to be annoying.

Hamilton looked as Farnsworth directed, and sure enough, there was the
young Virginian Lieutenant, standing on a barricade, his hat off,
cheering his men with a superb show of zeal. Not a hair of his head was
missing, so far as the glass could be relied upon to show.

Oncle Jazon's quick old eyes saw the gleam of the telescope tube in the
loop-hole.

"I never could shoot much," he muttered, and then a little bullet sped
with absolute accuracy from his disreputable looking rifle and
shattered the object-lens, just as Hamilton moved to withdraw the
glass, uttering an ejaculation of intense excitement.

"Such devils of marksmen!" said he, and his face was haggard. "That
infernal Indian lied."

"I could have told you all the time that the scalp Long-Hair brought to
you was not Beverley's," said Helm indifferently. "I recognized
Lieutenant Barlow's hair as soon as I saw it."

This was another piece of off-hand romance. Helm did not dream that he
was accidentally sketching a horrible truth.

"Barlow's!" exclaimed Farnsworth.

"Yes, Barlow's, no mistake--"

Two more men reeled from a port-hole, the blood spinning far out of
their wounds. Indeed, through every aperture in the walls the bullets
were now humming like mad hornets.

"Close that port-hole!" stormed Hamilton; then turning to Farnsworth he
added: "We cannot endure this long. Shut up every place large enough
for a bullet to get through. Go all around, give strict orders to all.
See that the men do not foolishly expose themselves. Those ruffians out
there have located every crack."

His glimpse of Beverley and the sinister remark of Helm had completely
unmanned him before his men fell. Now it rushed upon him that if he
would escape the wrath of the maddened creoles and the ven