tter
was on watch.

They found Paul in the sheltered nook, watching the forest and the open,
through the holes pierced for rifles, and he did not seek to hide his
pleasure at seeing them. Two other men were there, but they were
middle-aged and married, the fathers of increasing families, and they
were not offended when Paul received a major share of attention.

He told them that all was quiet, his own eyes were keen, but they failed
to mark anything unusual, and he believed that the savages, profiting by
their costly experience, would make no new attempt yet a while. Then he
spoke of the mysterious help that had come to them, and the same thought
was in his mind and Lucy's, though neither spoke of it. They stood there
a while, talking in low tones and looking for excuses to linger, when
one of the older men moved a little and held up a warning hand. He had
just taken his eyes from a loophole, and he whispered that he thought he
had seen something pass in the shadow of the wall.

All in the embrasure became silent at once, and Lucy, brave as she was,
could hear her heart beating. There was a slight noise on the outside of
the wall, so faint that only keen ears could hear it, and then as they
looked up they saw a hideous, painted face raised above the palisade.

One of the older men threw his rifle to his shoulder, but, quick as a
flash, Paul struck his hand away from the trigger. He knew who had come,
when he looked into the eyes that looked down at him, though he felt
fear, too--he could not deny it--as he met their gaze, so fierce, so
wild, so full of the primitive man.

"Don't you see?" he said, "it is Henry! Henry Ware!"

Even then Lucy Upton, intimate friend though she had been, scarcely saw,
but laughing a low soft laugh of intense satisfaction, Henry dropped
lightly among them. Good excuse had these men for not knowing him as his
transformation was complete! He stood before them not a white man, but
an Indian warrior, a prince of savages. His hair was drawn up in the
defiant scalp lock, his face bore the war paint in all its variations
and violent contrast of colors, the dark-green hunting shirt and
leggings with their beaded decorations were gone, and in their place a
red Indian blanket was wrapped around him, drooping in its graceful
folds like a Roman toga.

His figure, erect in the moonlight, nearly a head above the others, had
a certain savage majesty, and they gazed upon him in silence. He seemed
to