s soon
as I could. I have been home about two hours and mother and I--but where
is father?"

"Hasn't he come yet? Why, I thought he was here. We've all been
scattered since the last stand."

"I will go and look for him," said the giant, taking up his gun from
against the wall.

"I'm going with you," Louise declared. "Go on in the house, Uncle
Gideon, and don't tell mother where I'm gone. Now, you needn't say a
word--I'm going."

Down the road they went, and out into the woods. Far away they saw the
cabins blazing, on the banks of the bayou, and occasionally a gun was
heard, a dull bark, deep in the woods.

"You'd better go back," said Jim.

"No, I'm going with you. Oh, but this must have been an awful day--but
let us not talk about it now." And after a time she said: "And you
didn't suspect that I was doing newspaper work. They tell me that I did
it well, too."

"I read a story in a newspaper that reminded me of you," he said. "It
was called 'The Wing of a Bird.' It was beautiful."

"I didn't think so," she replied.

"Probably you didn't read it carefully," said he.

"I didn't read it carefully enough before I handed it in, I'm afraid,"
she replied.

"Oh, and did you write it?" He looked down at her and she nodded her
head. "Yes, and I find that I do better with stories than at anything
else," she said. "I have three accepted in the North and I have a book
under way. That was the trouble with me, Jim; I wanted to write and I
didn't know what ailed me, I was a crank."

"You are an angel."

He was leading her by the hand, and she looked up at him, but said
nothing.

Just in front of them they saw the dying glow of a cabin in coals. A
long clump of bushes hid the spot from view. They passed the bushes,
looking to the left, and suddenly the girl screamed. Not more than
twenty yards away stood the Major, with his back against a
tree--gripping the bent barrel of a gun; and ten feet from him stood
Mayo, slowly raising a pistol. She screamed and snatched the giant's gun
and fired it. Mayo wheeled about, dropped his pistol, clutched his bare
arm, and with the blood spouting up between his fingers he turned to
flee. Two white men sprang out in from of him, and the Major shouted:
"Don't kill him--he is to be hanged on the public square. I was trying
to take him alive--and had to knock down two of his men. Tie him."

He held out his arms to Louise, and with her head on his breast and with
mischief in her eyes,