it to make a
decent blaze. You haven't much of that minute left. Are you coming out?"

"No," said Torrance briefly, and, dropping the handkerchief, moved from
the window.

The next moment there was a flash in the darkness, and something came
whirring into the room. The girls could not see it, but they heard the
thud it struck with and saw a chip start from the cedar panelling. Then,
there was a rush of feet, and twice a red streak blazed from the window. A
man jerked a cartridge, which fell with a rattle from his rifle, and a
little blue smoke blew across the room. Flora Schuyler shivered as the
acrid fumes of it drifted about her, but Hetty stood very straight, with
one hand on the rim of the table.

"Got nobody, and they're into the shadow now," said a man disgustedly, and
Flora Schuyler, seeing his face, which showed a moment fierce and brutish
as he turned, felt that she could not forget it, and most illogically
hated him.

For almost a minute there was silence. Nobody moved in the big room, where
the shadows wavered as the faint flickering lamplight rose and fell, and
there was no sound but the doleful wail of the night wind from the
prairie. It was broken by a dull crash that was repeated a moment later,
and the men looked at one another.

"They've brought their axes along," said somebody. "If there's any of the
Michigan boys around they'll drive that door in."

"Watch it, two of you," said Torrance. "Jake, can't you get a shot at
them?"

A man crouched by the open window, which was some little height from the
ground, his arms upon the sill, and his head showing against the darkness
just above them. He was, it seemed to Miss Schuyler, horribly deliberate,
and she held her breath while she watched, as if fascinated, the long
barrel move a little. Then its muzzle tilted suddenly, a train of red
sparks blew out, and something that hummed through the smoke struck the
wall. The man dropped below the sill, and called hoarsely through the
crash of the falling axes.

"Got the pillar instead of him. There's a streak of light behind me. Well,
I'll try for him again."

Hetty emptied the box of cartridges, and, with hands that did not seem to
tremble, stood it up before the lamp. Once more the man crouched by the
window, a blurred, huddled object with head down on the rifle stock, and
there was another streak of flame. Then, the thud of the axes suddenly
ceased, and he laughed a little discordant laugh.

"Got hi