ing just entered. "Captain Stuart told me that he himself
opened the little gate and let her in by the sally-port. And there she
is now, all dressed out fresh again, walking with her husband on the
parade under the trees. An' yonder is the Injun colleen,--got here too
late! Answer her, man, according to your orders."

Against his will the young sentinel leaned out of the window with a
made-to-order smile, and as Choo-qualee-qualoo waved her hand and
pointed to the empty path along which Odalie was wont to come, he
intimated by signs that she had waited but was obliged to return to the
fort and was now within, and he pointed down to the gorge of the
bastion. To-morrow when there should be an eastern sky she would come
out, and Choo-qualee-qualoo signed that she would meet her. Then she
lingered, waving her hand now and again on her own account, and he
dutifully flourished his hat.

"Gosh," he exclaimed, "if treachery sticks in the gizzard like this
pretense there is no use in cord or shot,--the fellow does for himself!"

He was glad when the lingering twilight slipped down at last and put an
end to the long-range flirtation, for however alert an interest he might
have developed, were it voluntary, its utility as a military maneuver
blunted its zest. Choo-qualee-qualoo had sped away to her home up the
river; the stars were in the sky, and in broken glimmers reflected in
the ripples of the current. The head-men among the cordon, drawn around
Fort Loudon, sat in circles and discussed the possible reasons of the
sudden furious cannonade, and the others of minor tribal importance
listened and adjusted their own theories to the views advanced; the only
stragglers were the spies whom the cannonade had driven from the woods
that afternoon, now venturing back into the neighborhood, looking at the
lights of the fort, hearing often hilarious voices full of the triumph
of Montgomery's foray, and sometimes finding on the ground the spent
balls of the cannonade.

It had so cleared the nearer spaces that it had enabled Hamish, in a
guise become familiar to them, to gain the little thicket where
Choo-qualee-qualoo and Odalie were wont to conclude their talks. Close
by was the mouth of the cavernous passage that led to MacLeod's Station,
which no Indians knew the white people had discovered. With a sudden
plunge the boy was lost to sight in its labyrinthine darkness, and when
Hamish MacLeod emerged at the further end five miles away,