about you.
Danger may come when we least expect it."

June arose, and prepared to ascend to the roof; but she paused, with her
foot on the first round of the ladder. Mabel's heart beat so violently
that she was fearful its throbs would be heard; and she fancied that
some gleamings of her real intentions had crossed the mind of her
friend. She was right in part, the Indian woman having actually stopped
to consider whether there was any indiscretion in what she was about to
do. At first the suspicion that Mabel intended to escape flashed across
her mind; then she rejected it, on the ground that the pale-face had no
means of getting off the island, and that the blockhouse was much the
most secure place she could find. The next thought was, that Mabel had
detected some sign of the near approach of her father. This idea, too,
lasted but an instant; for June entertained some such opinion of her
companion's ability to understand symptoms of this sort--symptoms that
had escaped her own sagacity--as a woman of high fashion entertains of
the accomplishments of her maid. Nothing else in the same way offering,
she began slowly to mount the ladder.

Just as she reached the upper floor, a lucky thought suggested itself to
our heroine; and, by expressing it in a hurried but natural manner, she
gained a great advantage in executing her projected scheme.

"I will go down," she said, "and listen by the door, June, while you are
on the roof; and we will thus be on our guard, at the same time, above
and below."

Though June thought this savored of unnecessary caution, well knowing
that no one could enter the building unless aided from within, nor any
serious danger menace them from the exterior without giving sufficient
warning, she attributed the proposition to Mabel's ignorance and alarm;
and, as it was made apparently with frankness, it was received without
distrust. By these means our heroine was enabled to descend to the door,
as her friend ascended to the roof. The distance between the two was now
too great to admit of conversation; and for three or four minutes one
was occupied in looking about her as well as the darkness would allow,
and the other in listening at the door with as much intentness as if all
her senses were absorbed in the single faculty of hearing.

June discovered nothing from her elevated stand; the obscurity indeed
almost forbade the hope of such a result; but it would not be easy to
describe the sensation wi