knees. His beautiful eyes,
that were fixed on Stair's face, gradually blurred and grew filmy. He
moved his head restlessly as he was wont to do when seeking a caress.
Stair's hand was laid on his head to soothe him. Whitefoot stretched
himself out on his master's knees for the last time with the long,
contented sigh of one about to sleep, and shut his beautiful eyes for
ever. Only his tongue continued to lick his master's hand for another
moment or two.

"Oh, Stair," cried Patsy, "how he loved you--he died for you!"

"No, dear," said Stair softly, "for us!"

* * * * *

The next was a day of anxious tension. The long sinuous snakeback of the
shell-ridge showed black all its length at the bottom of the afternoon
ebb, but contrary to their expectations nothing moved in the camp of the
enemy. It was evident that they were waiting for the early morning. The
water would be at its lowest shortly after three, when the rush could be
made with sufficient light to see. This was the more necessary as there
were many quicksands to either side and in one or two places the ridge
was not quite continuous. The winter storms altered it, sometimes by
many feet, leaving isolated humps and mounds with quicksands about them,
which might easily trap the unwary. The enemy was evidently not going to
take any risks.

After Whitefoot's death Stair had perforce to tell everything to Patsy.
It was wonderful how it strengthened and reaffirmed her.

"Why did you not tell me?" she said. "Why did you take counsel with
everybody but me?"

"I did not," said Stair, smiling at her. "It was Eben who discovered
everything, and then came and asked me. I thought that there might be
nothing in it, and it was not till I was perfectly sure, that I saw the
necessity of disturbing you."

"You will never treat me as a child again?" she had her hands on his
sleeve now, and was looking up into his face.

"No," he said, "I know too well who carried me off here, breaking
prisons to get me--and has not known what to do with me since!"

"Oh, don't say that, Stair. I love you very dearly--more than I thought
possible."

He gazed at her for a moment, saw that his time had not yet come, and
then gently patted her cheek, so gently that she did not resent the
caress. All that day they watched the curving trenches from a little
angle of the tower from which a rifle could be brought to bear on the
shell causeway. That afternoon seemed