hearing other rifle shots.
Whirling about, I saw emerging from a near-by point in the ditch several
figures, shouting and waving their hats.

"Tommy," I yelled, "Gates, Echochee, Smilax!" I did not name them all,
but turned quickly as Doloria flew into my arms. "We're saved,
sweetheart! The dice have rolled for us!"

She was crying a little, clinging to my neck, talking fast, but saying
only one thing. And although Tommy afterwards declared that for a time
there was such a silence in the fort that he believed we had been
killed, I consider this but one of his verbal extravagances; for it
seemed only a second after he waved before we were on the parapet waving
back to him.

Yet, in the midst of my wildest cheer I stopped. It stuck in my throat,
it dried up as the fountain of my gladness seemed suddenly to have gone
dry, and I looked at her. There must have been a great pain in my
eyes--not physical, for that was transient and had passed--because she
touched them, whispering:

"What is it?"

"See what I'm cheering for," I answered huskily. "Our escape only means
death to our dreams--it's good-bye to the Oasis!"

"Why?" she asked, her face turning slightly pale.

"Because the minute those people get here you won't be my Doloria of the
Golden Dawn any more, but Princess Doloria of Azuria!"

She caught hold of my sleeve and gasped, a little hysterically:

"But, Jack, suppose I don't _want_ to be Princess Doloria!"

Our friends had covered half the distance, and I hurriedly said:

"You can't help yourself! You don't know the power that man, Dragot,
has! Will you run off with me to-night?" For I could not dismiss the
obsession that Monsieur would prevail. "He came especially armed with
government orders to find you and take you back. And I'm only afraid
your heart's too straight to refuse him, even if you could, when he puts
it up to your conscience! Oh, Doloria--please don't cry!"

"I won't," she answered tremulously, "if you stop talking that way!"

I was sorry, and quickly told her that everything would come out all
right--that my love was stronger than all the powers of all the
governments under the sun. Then I helped her down on the prairie side,
for the others were nearly up to us, approaching with bared heads. There
was a fantastic note in our situation that deeply affected me. What
could have been more bizarre than an Azurian princess holding court upon
the edge of a Florida prairie? This, emphasized by