sh out certain stains on the hearth-stones; and
those things would have tried the courage of more iron-nerved men than
myself.

I should not have been surprised if Eric had come out of that faint, a
gibbering maniac; but I toiled over him with the courage of blank
hopelessness, pumping his arms up and down, forcing liquor between the
clenched teeth, splashing the cold, clammy face with water, and laving
his forehead. At last he opened his eyes wearily. Like a man ill at ease
with life, moaning, he turned his face to the wall.

Outside, it was as if the unleashed furies of hell fought to quench
their thirst in human blood. The clamor of those red demons was in my
ears and I was still working over Hamilton, loosening his jacket collar,
under-pillowing his chest, fanning him, and doing everything else I
could think of, to ease his labored breathing, when Father Holland burst
into the lodge, utterly unmanned and sobbing like a child.

"For the Lord's sake, Rufus," he cried, "for the Lord's sake, come and
help! They're murdering him! They're murdering him! 'Twas I who set them
on him, and I can't stop them! I can't stop them!"

"Let them murder him!" I returned, unconsciously demonstrating that the
civilized heart differs only in degree from the barbarian.

"Come, Rufus," he pleaded, "come, for the love of Frances, or your hands
will not be clean. There'll be blood on your hands when you go back to
her. Come, come!"

Out we rushed through the thronging Mandanes, now riotous with the lust
of blood. A ring of young bucks had been formed round the Sioux to keep
the crowd off. Naked, with arms pinioned, the victim stood motionless
and without fear.

"Good white father, he no understand," said the Mandanes, jostling the
weeping priest back from the circle of the young men. "Good white
father, he go home!" In spite of protest by word and act they roughly
shoved us to our lodge, the doomed man's death chant ringing in our ears
as they pushed us inside and clashed our door. In vain we had argued
they would incur the vengeance of the Sioux nation. Our voices were
drowned in the shout for blood--for blood!

The sigh of the wind brought mournful strains of the victim's dirge to
our lodge. I fastened the door, with robes against it to keep the sound
out. Then a smell of burning drifted through the window, and I
stop-gapped that, too, with more robes.

* * * * *

That the Sioux would wreak swift