strangers.

"I guess, ma'am, if there's anything you would like to take with you
now, we'd better go into the bush."

"No, there is nothing, but," she cried, "I thank you very much, and if
there is anything that would be of use to you--"

When the Danite had first laid Halsey under the tree he had taken a
white cloth from the tent and wiped the blood from the coat, that
Susannah might not be too much shocked at the sight. He took this cloth
now and tore it till the stained fragment alone remained in his hand. He
thrust it in his breast.

"This will stand for the blood of them both," he said. "I guess that's
all I want." But when he had started towards the thicket he remembered
Susannah's needs, and went back for a blanket.

The poplar saplings that bordered the creek were still holding a thin
gold canopy overhead, and the dogwood was glinting with scarlet. The
other members of the community had gone so far ahead that it was a long
time before, making their toilsome way, they came upon their former
neighbours.

The fugitives had called a halt where a brook which passed through the
bush offered some relief to the pain and fever of those who were
wounded. One of these, a little girl, had already died by the way, and
her frantic mother began to reproach Susannah, wailing that if the child
had not been saying her texts to the elder she would not have been a
mark for the enemy.

The men were cutting down saplings to make place for a camp. It was
their intention to remain, going back under the cover of night to get
food and blankets from the houses, if they were not pillaged and burned,
going back in any case to bury their dead at the first streak of dawn.

The Danite turned to Susannah. "I guess, ma'am, neither you nor I have
got any business to take us back, and there's enough of the brothers
here to do the work."

Susannah went on with the young man through hour after hour of the
afternoon farther and farther into the unknown fastnesses of the wood.
They left behind them the low thicket of second growth, and penetrated
into an uncleared Missouri forest.

CHAPTER XII.

All the powers of the young Danite were strung by excitement into the
fiercest vitality, and he thought that physical fatigue was the best
medicine for Susannah's mind. Why he had accepted the work of saving her
as part of his mission of Mormon defence he did not ask himself. In him,
as in many athletes, thought and action seemed one. He