e, they were now
facing another, as the savages wheeled about them. He rose to his feet in
order to keep with his friends. He had been loading and firing more
rapidly than he knew, and the barrel of his rifle was hot to his touch. He
stood a moment listening for the savages, and then turned to two
indistinct figures near him.

"Sol," he said, "can you and Henry see them?"

The two indistinct figures suddenly became distinct, and sprang upon him.
He was seized in a powerful grasp and hurled down so violently that he
became unconscious for a little while. Why he was not killed he did not
know that night, nor ever after--probably they wished to show a trophy.
When he gathered his scattered senses he was being dragged away, and his
hands were bound. He was too dazed to cry aloud for rescue, but he
remembered afterwards that the battle behind him was waning at the time.

He was dragged deeper into the forest, and the shots on the hill became
fainter and fewer. His sight cleared, but the darkness was so great that
he could yet see little except the warrior who pulled him along. Paul made
an effort and gained a better footing. It hurt his pride to be dragged,
and now he walked on in the path that the warrior indicated.

They stopped after a while in an open space in the forest. The moon was
clearing a little, and Paul saw other warriors standing about. Nearly all
were wounded. Hideous and painted they were, with savage eyes filled with
rage and disappointment, and the looks they gave Paul made him consider
himself as one dead.

As the moon cleared, more warriors drifted back into the glade. Some of
these, too, bore wounds, and Paul's heart leaped up with fierce joy as he
saw that they had been defeated. The firing had ceased and the wilderness
was returning to silence, broken only by the low words of the savages and
the soft sound of their moccasins on the earth.

Paul was still in a sort of daze. The warriors were grouped about him,
their sole visible trophy of the battle, and they regarded him with
vengeful eyes. But he had passed through so much that he was not afraid.
His only feeling was that of dull stupefaction, and mingled with it a sort
of lingering pride that his comrades had been the victors, although he
himself was a prisoner. He did not know whether they would kill him or
take him with them, and at that moment his mind was so dulled that he felt
little curiosity about the question.

A thin, sharp-faced warr