e on Ambrose. "Of course!" he said.

"Goo'-by, Angleysman!" breathed Nesis. "I come to-morrow night."

CHAPTER XXIX.

NESIS.

After this, Ambrose's dreary imprisonment took on a new color. True,
the hours next day threatened to drag more slowly than ever, but with
the hope that it might be the last day he could bear it philosophically.

Hour after hour he paced his floor on springs. "Tomorrow the free sky
over my head!" he told himself. "I'll be doing something again!"

He watched the teepees with an added interest, wondering if any of the
women's figures he saw might be hers. The most he could distinguish at
the distance was the difference between fat and slender.

In the middle of the morning he saw Watusk ride forth, accompanied by
four men that he guessed were the councilors. Watusk now had a
military aspect.

On his head he wore a pith helmet, and across the frock coat a broad
red sash like a field marshal's. He and his henchmen climbed the trail
leading back to Enterprise.

Later, Ambrose saw a party of women leave camp, carrying birch-bark
receptacles that looked like school-book satchels. They commenced to
pick berries on the hillside. Ambrose wondered if his little friend
were among them.

They gradually circled the hill and approached his shack. As they drew
near he finally recognized Nesis in one who occasionally straightened
her back and glanced toward his window. She was slenderer than the
others.

The shack stood on a little terrace of clean grass. Above it and below
stretched the rough hillside, covered with scrubby bushes and weeds.
It was in this rough ground that the women were gathering wild
cranberries.

Coming to the edge of the grass, they paused with full satchels,
talking idly, nibbling the fruit and casting inquisitive glances toward
Ambrose's prison.

There were eight of them, and Nesis stood out from the lot like a star.
The four men playing poker in the grass at one side paid no attention
to them.

Nesis with a sly smile whispered in her neighbor's ear. The other girl
grinned and nodded, the word was passed around, and they all came
forward a little way in the grass with a timid air.

Their inquisitive eyes sought to pierce the obscurity of the shack.
Ambrose, not yet knowing what was expected of him, kept in the
background.

The fat girl, prompted and nudged by Nesis, suddenly squalled something
in Kakisa, which convulsed them all. Ambrose had no di