d Spite, "you never slept in such a room as
this. I am sorry that I must leave you immediately, but you shall be
well cared for. Be happy! and expect me soon." He dropped the curtain
partition or portiere and Faith and Sophia were alone in their prison
palace.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote AE: Appendix, Note A.]

[Footnote AF: Appendix, Note B.]

CHAPTER XV.

A PIXIE INSURRECTION.

Fort Spinder was in a ferment. The unusual stir in the Brownie camp was
seen by the pickets on the outer barricades, and they at once gave the
alarm, thinking that a night attack was to be made. The garrison sprang
to arms. The Pixies swarmed to the breastworks; the Pixinees (as the
females were called) mounted the ramparts of the fort.

Now arose the trouble that Spite had anticipated.

"Where is the Captain?" The word ran from mouth to mouth along
barricades and breastwork. The Captain was not to be found.

"Where is the Lieutenant, then?" The inquiry ran through the Tegenaria
quarter with the same puzzling result. Presently a sentinel who had
mounted guard near the abutment of the old suspension bridge reported
that he had seen the two officers climb the pier and go out upon the
cables.

"Have they returned?"

No he had seen nothing of them since.

A rumor was started, and ran through the lines, that Spite had been
captured by the Brownies, and that had caused the unusual excitement in
their camp.

Then came another rumor that made headway amid whispers, hints, and
mutterings of "Treachery!" "Cowardice!" "Desertion!" "Sold out to the
Brownies!"

So the leaven of riot and panic began to work. Some bewailed the missing
officers as martyrs; some cursed them as traitors; all mourned their
absence as a fatal blow to their own safety. Irritated by the
uncertainty, worn out by watching, fasting and fighting, the two parties
readily passed from words to blows.

"They are true as steel!"

"They are false traitors!"

"You lie!"

"Hah! take that!"

Words like these, followed by the clatter of claws, and the sharp
rasping of fangs were heard in every quarter. Luckily the third in
command, Lieutenant Heady, was no milksop. He had seen riots and
rebellions before and had quelled them. In stubbornness, cunning and
ferocity he was a genuine Pixie. Fortune, it seemed, had made him chief,
for the time, at least. And chief he would be, or cease to be at all.

He summoned a squad of the most courageous guards, and with them pas