ver.

All this passed through his brain as he ran--yet ran with judgment. He
had not put forth his best pace as yet. A glance over his shoulder from
time to time told him that his enemies, though they kept the distance
equal, were not gaining on him, and that being so, he would reserve a
spurt for emergencies. Thus the chase sped on, and the pursuing savages
strung out upon the track of the one white man like a pack of hounds in
full cry.

Ancram the while was sitting in the shade of the rough verandah, reading
a novel, and, alternately, thinking. He had returned there with a
purpose, and that was to force Lamont to do something for him; wherefore
the ill-concealed ungraciousness of his welcome had no effect upon him
whatever. He could make it unpleasant for Lamont--very unpleasant; he
had already noticed a growing coolness towards the latter since he had
insinuated here and there the tale--his version--of the affair at
Courtland Mere. And Clare Vidal? Watching her furtively but keenly he
had recognised that she entertained a high opinion of Lamont, but not of
himself. Well, that might be altered, with a little judicious innuendo,
as to the first, at any rate, if not as to the last. She certainly was
a splendid looking girl, and ought to have her eyes opened. Lovely eyes
they were, too, by Jove!

Looking up now, he saw Lamont strolling across from the stable.

"I say, old chap, do you go to bed with that magazine rifle?" he said
banteringly, in allusion to the weapon the other always carried during
the last few days.

"You may yet come to see the sound judgment even of that," he answered
grimly.

And such are the coincidences, the ironies of life, that even as he
spoke a couple of shots snapped forth from among the thorns along the
top of the river bank, together with an astonishing whoop.

"Hi-ha! Lamont! Look out! Look out! The devils are coming!"

"That's Peters," he said.

"Why, what the deuce--" began Ancram, looking blank, as a horrible
suspicion of the truth began to dawn upon him.

Both men stood staring in the direction of the sounds. Then one of them
instinctively and characteristically slipped under cover of the house.
But that one was not Lamont. Now Peters appeared, sprinting in fine
form across the open. Behind him, a flourish of shields above the
thorn-bushes, and some threescore savages sprang forth at a run,
determined to fall on the place before its surprised inmate or inma