?

A dozen weapons reached him from as many crowding hands and he went down
on the last earth her feet had trod, the spot where she had last touched
his hand.

Her golden voice, sweet with its sliding minors, was in his ears, the
sweetness of her lips on his.

"A stone to your foot, Ma'amselle," he whispered, as the darkness broke
and the stars began to dance on a sky of blood-red fire; "serve you
with my life,--no better fate,--oh, I love you! I--a stone to your
foot,--Ma'amselle!"

And at that moment Maren Le Moyne, straining every muscle of her young
body to save the man she loved, looked swiftly back, having left the
defile to stagger, stumbling, southward to where Mowbray's men waited
with the canoe.

She saw the sudden flaming of the torch, the slim, boyish figure in its
buckskins, the ring of faces, and the flash of weapons; saw the forms
close in and the slim boy go down like a reed in the winter storm, and
a cry broke from her lips as De Courtenay's rifle began to sound in the
gorge.

With tears on her cheeks and her face drawn hard, she raised her head
and gave a panther's far-off call.

CHAPTER XXV ANSWERED PRAYERS

Out of the forest at the signal came running Alloybeau and McDonald and
Frith, alert, ready for anything, wondering beyond wonder at the call
that meant deliverance. Not one of them had thought to see again this
strange, intrepid woman who pierced the forbidden places and wound men
like Mr. Mowbray around her fingers. It would have been a toss-up for
men to attempt what she had done.

She was coming to the canoe, and she was victorious. Yet they knew that
death was up and at her heels, from the sound of the shots.

The big canoe was in the water, the men were ready, paddle in hand, with
Wilson knee-deep in the stream ready to push off, when along the reach
of shore there came that sorry ending to the gallant venture,--Ridgar
and the girl, staggering, stumbling, trying to make what haste they
could, with swinging roughly between them the apparently lifeless body
of the factor of Fort de Seviere.

Breathless and exhausted they reached the boat. Brilliers and Wilson
reached for their burden, threw it into the bottom, and hauled Maren on
her knees among the thwarts.

There was a shove, a word, a dip of the paddles, and the canoe shot
out to the deeper waters, and none aboard her saw the form of Edmonton
Ridgar draw back into the shelter of tangled vines on shore.

"Give me a blad