the shading of long lashes--no promise of
tenderness of heart. I believed it was seldom she inclined to mercy,
seldom she would step between her warriors and their revenge. I
acknowledge freely I felt to some degree the strange spell of her
power, the magic influence of her soft, sinuous beauty, which I doubt
if any man could utterly resist. Yet I recognized her from the first,
even as she stood wrapped in the sun's rays on the rock summit, as one
who, by instinct and nature, was scarce less a savage than her most
desperate follower, although she possessed the rare gift of masking her
cruelty beneath the pleasing smile of a woman not entirely unacquainted
with the courtesies of refinement.

I marvelled greatly who she could be, thus sporting the polite graces
of a reception-room in the midst of these squalid huts. What was her
strange life-story? How ever came such a woman, with charm of face,
and grace of manner, to be acknowledged leader over such a people? It
was not so odd that a clever, resourceful woman, driven perhaps by
necessity, should have made unscrupulous use of their dominant
superstitions, and, by naming herself "Daughter of the Sun," have
obtained supreme power. The perfect acting of such an assumed
character would not prove difficult to her, while their servile worship
of the protesting Puritan, whose red hair alone had elevated him to
sainthood, proved how easily these savages might be deceived, and led
slaves by subtle magic. Yet who was the woman? Whence came she? Why
should she ever have chosen such a life?

And Eloise! Through what misfortune had she already attained the
undisguised dislike of this Amazon? To what fate would this unmerited
disfavor condemn her? It is a terrible thing to remain chained and
helpless at such a time, to realize that cruel wrong, possibly torture,
is being visited upon another, upon one you know and love, and yet be
unable to uplift hand or voice in warning. I am by nature cool in
action, yet there are few who fret more grievously when held in leash,
compelled to await in uncertainty the coming of the unknown.

All I could do that day was to pace the hard earthen floor, vainly
endeavoring to quiet the wild throbbing of my heart with every hope I
might conjure up, now and then approaching the unguarded entrance of
the lodge to search anxiously for some ground of hope. It was thus the
long afternoon wore away, until the deepening shadows of sun-setting
r