ok down beside her, and after them he thrust in the empty gun and
the apron with its weight of cartridges. His face was demoniac in
its command.

"If you don't stay there, I'll open the door and go outside to fight!
Do you understand? _Stay there!_"

His clenched fist was in their faces, his voice almost a shout. He saw
another white spurt of dust; the bullet crashed in tinware, and
following the crash came a shriek from Keok in the attic.

In that upper gloom Sokwenna's gun had fallen with a clatter. The old
warrior bent himself over, nearly double, and with his two withered
hands was clutching his stomach. He was on his knees, and his breath
suddenly came in a panting, gasping cry. Then he straightened slowly and
said something reassuring to Keok, and faced the window again with the
gun which she had loaded for him.

The scream had scarcely gone from Keok's lips when Alan was at the top
of the ladder, calling her. She came to him through the stark blackness
of the room, sobbing that Sokwenna was hit; and Alan reached out and
seized her, and dragged her down, and placed her with Nawadlook and
Mary Standish.

From them he turned to the window, and his soul cried out madly for the
power to see, to kill, to avenge. As if in answer to this prayer for
light and vision he saw his cabin strangely illumined; dancing, yellow
radiance silhouetted the windows, and a stream of it billowed out
through an open door into the night. It was so bright he could see the
rain-mist, scarcely heavier than a dense, slowly descending fog, a wet
blanket of vapor moistening the earth. His heart jumped as with each
second the blaze of light increased. They had set fire to his cabin.
They were no longer white men, but savages.

He was terribly cool, even as his heart throbbed so violently. He
watched with the eyes of a deadly hunter, wide-open over his
rifle-barrel. Sokwenna was still. Probably he was dead. Keok was sobbing
in the cellar-pit. Then he saw a shape growing in the illumination,
three or four of them, moving, alive. He waited until they were clearer,
and he knew what they were thinking--that the bullet-riddled cabin had
lost its power to fight. He prayed God it was Graham he was aiming at,
and fired. The figure went down, sank into the earth as a dead man
falls. Steadily he fired at the others--one, two, three, four--and two
out of the four he hit, and the exultant thought flashed upon him that
it was good shooting under the cir