; and he stretched his iron-clad length beside
her and closed his eyes, firmly resolved not to waste a minute of this
wonderful night in sleep.

When he opened them an instant later, it was broad daylight, the
boulders had been rolled away, the fragrance of roasting meat permeated
the atmosphere, and Nadia was making a deafening clamor, beating his
steel breastplate lustily with the flat of his huge saber.

"Daylight in the swamp, you sleeper!" she exclaimed. "Roll out or roll
up! Come and get it, before I throw it away!"

"I must have been kind of tired," he said sheepishly, when he saw that
she had shot a bird and had cooked breakfast for them both while he had
been buried in oblivion.

"Peculiar, too, isn't it?" Nadia asked, pointedly. "You only did
about ten days' work yesterday in ten minutes, swinging this frightful
snickersnee of yours. Why, you played with it as though it were a
knitting-needle, and when I wanted to wake you up with it, I could
hardly lift it."

"Thought you didn't want that subject even mentioned?" he tried to steer
the talk away from his prowess with the broadsword.

"That was yesterday," airily. "Besides, I don't mind talking about
you--it's thinking about us being ... you know ... that I can't stand."

"All x, ace. I get you right. Let's eat."

* * * * *

Breakfast over, they started down the valley, Stevens carrying his
helmet under his arm. Hardly had they started however, than Nadia's keen
eyes saw a movement through the trees, and, she stopped and pointed.
Stevens looked once, then hand in hand they dashed back to their cave.

"We'll pile up some of the boulders and you lie low," he instructed her
as he screwed on his helmet. She snapped open his face-plate.

"But what about you? Aren't you coming in, too?" she demanded.

"Can't--they'd surround us and starve us out. I'm safe in this
armor--thank Heaven we made it as solid as we did--and I'll fight 'em in
the open. I'll show 'em what the bear did to the buckwheat!"

"All right, I guess, but I wish I had my armor, too," she mourned as he
snapped shut his plate and walled her into the cave with the same great
rocks he had used the night before. Then, Nadia safe from attack, he
drew his quiver of war-arrows into position over his shoulder, placed
one at the ready on his bow-string and turned to face the horde of
things rushing up the valley toward him. Wild animals he had supposed
them, but as h