t the pale, cold stars, as if everything
in the world had ceased for her.

Henry crept a little nearer. He made a slight noise, as of a lizard
running through the grass, but the woman took no notice. He crept
closer, and there he lay flat upon the grass within six feet of her,
his figure merely a slightly darker blur against the dark blur of the
earth. Then, trusting to the woman's courage and strength of mind, he
emitted a hiss very soft and low, like the warning of a serpent, half in
fear and half in anger.

The woman moved a little, and looked toward the point from which the
sound had come. It might have been the formidable hiss of a coiling
rattlesnake that she heard, but she felt no fear. She was too much
stunned, too near exhaustion to be alarmed by anything, and she did
not look a second time. She merely settled back on the pine boughs, and
again looked dully up at the pale, cold stars that cared so little for
her or hers.

Henry crept another yard nearer, and then he uttered that low noise,
sibilant and warning, which the woman, the product of the border, knew
to be made by a human being. She raised herself a little, although it
was difficult with her bound hands to sit upright, and saw a dark shadow
approaching her. That dark shadow she knew to be the figure of a man. An
Indian would not be approaching in such a manner, and she looked again,
startled into a sudden acute attention, and into a belief that the
incredible, the impossible, was about to happen. A voice came from the
figure, and its quality was that of the white voice, not the red.

"Do not move," said that incredible voice out of the unknown. "I have
come for your rescue, and others who have come for the same purpose are
near. Turn on one side, and I will cut the bonds that hold your arms."

The voice, the white voice, was like the touch of fire to Mary Newton.
A sudden fierce desire for life and for the lives of her four children
awoke within her just when hope had gone the call to life came. She
had never heard before a voice so full of cheer and encouragement. It
penetrated her whole being. Exhaustion and despair fled away.

"Turn a little on your side," said the voice.

She turned obediently, and then felt the sharp edge of cold steel as it
swept between her wrists and cut the thongs that held them together. Her
arms fell apart, and strength permeated every vein of her being.

"We shall attack in a few moments," said the voice, "but at th