sudden sympathy as
his hapless wife and child prostrate themselves beside his rocky bier.
Drummond can afford to lose no more, and orders the lower half of each
hole to be stopped with blankets, blouses, shirts, anything that will
block a shot, and then for an hour the fire of the besiegers is
harmless, and no longer can the besieged catch even an occasional
glimpse of them. At noon their fire has ceased entirely and, even when
breathing a sigh of relief, the men look into one another's faces
questioningly. How long can this last? How hot, how close the air in
the cave is growing!

Drummond has gone for a moment into the inner chamber, where Moreno is
now breathing his last, to inquire for Wing and to speak a word of
cheer to his fair and devoted nurses. Not one murmur of complaint or
dread has fallen from their lips, though they know their father to
have ridden on perilous quest and into possible ambush; though they
know their brother to be lying at the ruined ranch, perhaps seriously
wounded; though their own fate may be capture, with indescribable
suffering, shame, and death. Fanny Harvey has behaved like a heroine,
as the two troopers remarked, and Ruth has done her best to follow her
sister's lead. Yet they, too, now realize how close and stifling the
heavy atmosphere is growing. Is it to be black hole of Calcutta over
again? Even as he takes her hand in his Drummond reads the dread in
Ruth's tearless face. Even as he holds it and whispers words of hope
and comfort there is a heavy, continuous, crashing sound at the mouth
of the cave, just in front of the rock barricade, and he springs back
to learn the cause.

"They're heaving down logs and brushwood, sir," whispers Costigan.
"They mean to roast us out if they can't do anything else."

More thunder and crash; more heaping up of resinous logs from the
cliffs above them. Some of the men beg to be allowed to push out and
die fighting, but Drummond sternly refuses. "At the worst," he says,
"we can retire into the back cave; we have abundant water there. The
air will last several hours yet, and I tell you help will
come,--_must_ come, before the day is much older."

Two o'clock. Hissing flames and scorching heat block the cavern
entrance. The rocky barrier grows hotter and hotter; the air within
denser and more stifling. The water in the canteens and pails is no
longer cool. It is hardly even cooling. The few men who remain with
Drummond in the front of the cave