coats, and my lady
darted in to fall upon Richard in a very transport of pity.

"Oh, my poor Dick! they have killed you!" she sobbed; "oh, cruel,
cruel!" Then she lashed out at us. "Why don't you strike a light? How
can I find and dress his hurts in the dark?"

"Your pardon, Mistress Margery," I said; "'tis only that the fever has
overcome him. He has no sore hurts, as I believe, save the
fire-scorching."

"A light!" she commanded; "I must have a light and see for myself."

We had to humor her, though it was something against prudence. Ephraim
found dry punk in a rotten log, and firing it with the flint and steel
of a great king's musket--one of his reavings from the enemy--soon had a
pine-knot torch for her. She gave it to the Catawba to hold; and while
she was cooing over her patient and binding up his burns in some simples
gathered near at hand by the Indian, I had the story of the double
rescue from the old hunter.

Set forth in brief, that which had come as a miracle to Dick and me
figured as a daring bit of strategy made possible by the emptying of the
Indian camp at our torture spectacle.

Yeates and the Catawba, following out the plan agreed upon, had come
within spying distance while yet we were in the midst of that hopeless
back-to-back battle, and had most wisely held aloof. But later, when
every Indian of the Cherokee band was busy at our torture trees, they
set to work.

With no watch to give the alarm, 'twas easy to rifle the Indian wigwams
of the firearms and ammunition. The latter they threw into the stream;
the muskets they loaded and trained over a fallen tree at the northern
edge of the savanna, bringing them to bear pointblank upon the
light-horse guard gathered again around the great fire.

The next step was the cutting out of the women; this was effected
whilst the baronet-captain was paying his courtesy call on us. Like the
looting of the Indian camp, 'twas quickly planned and daringly done; it
asked but the quieting of the two trooper guards on the forest side of
the tepee-lodge, a warning word to Margery and her woman, and a
shadow-like flitting with them over the dead bodies of their late
jailers to the shelter of the wood.

Once free of the camp, Yeates had hurried his charges to a place of
temporary safety farther up the valley, leaving the Catawba to cross the
stream to lay a train of dampened powder to the makeshift magazine. When
he had led the women to a place of safety, the ol