behind her, scattering pebbles in her path, striking up the dust, and ploughing little furrows in the ground.  A quarter of the distance covered!  Betty had passed the top of the knoll now and she was going down the gentle slope like the wind.  None but a fine marksman could have hit that small, flitting figure.  The yelling and screeching had become deafening.  The reports of the rifles blended in a roar.  Yet above it all Betty heard Wetzel’s stentorian yell.  It lent wings to her feet.  Half the distance covered!  A hot, stinging pain shot through Betty’s arm, but she heeded it not.  The bullets were raining about her.  They sang over her head; hissed close to her ears, and cut the grass in front of her; they pattered like hail on the stockade-fence, but still untouched, unharmed, the slender brown figure sped toward the gate.  Three-fourths of the distance covered!  A tug at the flying hair, and a long, black tress cut off by a bullet, floated away on the breeze.  Betty saw the big gate swing; she saw the tall figure of the hunter; she saw her brother.  Only a few more yards!  On!  On!  On!  A blinding red mist obscured her sight.  She lost the opening in the fence, but unheeding she rushed on.  Another second and she stumbled; she felt herself grasped by eager arms; she heard the gate slam and the iron bar shoot into place; then she felt and heard no more.

Silas Zane bounded up the stairs with a doubly precious burden in his arms.  A mighty cheer greeted his entrance.  It aroused Alfred Clarke, who had bowed his head on the bench and had lost all sense of time and place.  What were the women sobbing and crying over?  To whom belonged that white face?  Of course, it was the face of the girl he loved.  The face of the girl who had gone to her death.  And he writhed in his agony.

Then something wonderful happened.  A warm, living flush swept over that pale face.  The eyelids fluttered; they opened, and the dark eyes, radiant, beautiful, gazed straight into Alfred’s.

Still Alfred could not believe his eyes.  That pale face and the wonderful eyes belonged to the ghost of his sweetheart.  They had come back to haunt him.  Then he heard a voice.

“O-h! but that brown place burns!”

Alfred saw a bare and shapely arm.  Its beauty was marred by a cruel red welt.  He heard that same sweet voice laugh and cry together.  Then he came back to life and hope.  With one bound he sprang to a porthole.

“God, what a woman!” he said between his teeth, as he thrust the rifle forward.

It was indeed not a time for inaction.  The Indians, realizing they had been tricked and had lost a golden opportunity, rushed at the Fort with renewed energy.  They attacked from all sides and with the persistent fury of savages long disappointed in their hopes.  They were received with a scathing, deadly fire.  Bang! roared the cannon, and the detachment of savages dropped their ladders and fled.  The little “bull