e not the time to spare. Besides, would they let you risk it
again, even for them?"

And Hamish was suddenly diverted to telling of his risks, of all the
escapes, by flood and fell, that he had made;--how often he had been
shot at from ambush; how he had swum rivers; how he had repeatedly
hidden from the Indians by dropping himself down into the hollows of
trees, and once how nearly he had come to getting out no more, the place
being so strait that he could scarcely use his constricted muscles to
climb up to the cavity that had let him in. He had not so much trouble
on the return trip; Ensign Milne had procured for him a good horse, and
a rifle--he had had a brace of pistols--the horse was a free goer--as
fresh now as if he had not been a mile to-day.

"And where is he now?" asked Demere, a look of anxiety on his face.

"At MacLeod Station, hitched there with a good saddle on him and
saddle-bags half full of corn."

"Come, Hamish," said Stuart, rising, "you must be off; some Indian might
find the horse."

Hamish's eyes filled with tears,--to leave Odalie and Sandy without a
word! He could not endure for the men to see these tears, although they
thought none the less well of him for them.

"Let me drop a tear in farewell for Odalie," he said, trying to be very
funny, brushing his right eye with his right hand. "And for Sandy," his
left eye with his left hand. "And Fifine," his right eye with his right
hand. "And the cat," his left eye with his left hand.

There could be nothing unmanly or girlish in this jovial demonstration!

"Come, you zany!" exclaimed Stuart, affecting to think these tremulous
farewells very jocose.

"Yes," said Demere, seriously, "we do not know how soon the Indians may
discover our use of that passage,--up to this time it has been our only
hope."

Hamish gathered up his calash, and the precise Demere assisted him to
adjust it and his disordered dress more after the manner in which Odalie
wore it. Hamish, as directed, took Stuart's arm as they went out, his
eyes still full of tears, and for his life he could not control the
tremor of emotion, not of fear, in the fibers of his hand, which he was
sure the officer must note. But Stuart's attention was fixed on the
skies. It was later than in those days when Odalie was wont to keep
tryst with Choo-qualee-qualoo, now nearly a month ago. Still he fancied
that in the afterglow of the sunset the Indians might discern the color
and the style of th