quared logs; moreover, it
was possible that some lingering religious feeling might restrain the
Indians from firing it.

The suggestion was received with suspicion. John Gaviller refused
point-blank to leave his house.

As the hours passed without any change in the situation they began to
feel as if they could endure no more. They were almost ready to wish
that the savages might attack them and have done with it.

They endlessly and vainly discussed what might be passing in the red
men's minds. Tole Grampierre, hearing this talk, offered to go and
find out.

There was no danger to him, he said. Even if they should discover that
he was not one of themselves, they had no quarrel with his people.
Ambrose let him go.

He never returned. Ambrose and Macfarlane helped him through the
barbed wire, and he set off, making a wide detour behind the houses
that faced the river, meaning to join the Indians from the other side.

Most of the Indians had for some time been engaged in rifling the
warehouse, which adjoined the store behind.

Ambrose and Macfarlane, anxiously watching from the porch, heard a
sudden outcry raised in this quarter, and saw a man come running
desperately around the corner of the store, pursued by a howling dozen.

Ambrose knew the runner by his rakish, broad-brimmed hat and flying
sash. His heart leaped into the race. Tole was gaining.

"Go it! Go it!" Ambrose cried.

Tole was not bringing his pursuers back to the big house, but led the
way off to one side by the quarters. Only a few yards separated him
from the all-concealing darkness.

"He's safe!" murmured Ambrose.

At the same moment half of Tole's pursuers stopped dead, and their
rifles barked. The flying figure spun around with uptossed arms, and
plunged to the ground.

Ambrose groaned from the bottom of his breast. Nerved by a blind rage,
his own gun instinctively went up. He could have picked off one or two
from where he stood. Macfarlane flung a restraining arm around him.

"Stop! You'll bring the whole mob down on us!" he cried. He looked at
Ambrose not unkindly. The sacrifice of Tole obliged him to change his
attitude.

Ambrose turned in the door, silently grinding his teeth. At the end of
the passage he found a chair, and dropped upon it, holding his head
between his hands.

The face of Tole as he had first beheld it--proud, comely, and full of
health--rose before him vividly.

He remembered that he had said