It was pleasant to be engaged with familiar objects and duties after passing through all sorts of horrors, and Dorothy entered cheerfully on her self-imposed tasks.  She quickly lit a fire, and then went out with a large pitcher to the inevitable well found on all Canadian homesteads.  She had to draw the water up in the bucket some forty or fifty feet, but she was no weakling, and soon accomplished that.  To fill and swing the camp-kettle across the cheery fire was the work of a minute or two.  She then got the provisions out of the sleighs, and before the three men returned from looking after the horses she had laid out a meal on the well-kept deal table, which she had Covered with an oilcloth.  The tea had been made by this time, and the four steaming pannikins filled with the dark, amber-hued nectar looked truly tempting.  The rude benches were drawn close to the table, and the room assumed anything but a deserted appearance.

It would have been quite a festive repast only that the thought of Sergeant Pasmore’s probable fate would obtrude itself.  Certainly they could not count upon the security of their own lives for one single moment.  It was just as likely as not that a party of rebels might drive up as they sat there and either shoot them down or call upon them to surrender.  Dorothy, despite her endeavours to banish all thoughts of the situation from her mind, could not free herself from the atmosphere of tragedy and mystery that shrouded the fate of the captured one.  Her reason told her it was ten chances to one that the rebels would promptly shoot him as a dangerous enemy.  Still, an uncanny something that she could not define would not allow her to believe that he was dead:  rather was she inclined to think that he was that very moment alive, but in imminent peril of his life and thinking of her.  So strongly at times did this strange fancy move her that once she fully believed she heard him call her by name.  She put down the pannikin of tea from her lips untasted, and with difficulty suppressed an almost irresistible impulse to cry out.  But there was no sound to be heard outside save the dull thud of some snow falling from the eaves.

They had just finished their meal when suddenly a terrible din was heard outside.  It seemed to come from the horse corral.  There was a thundering of hoofs, a few equine snorts of fear, a straining and creaking of timber, a loud crash, and then the drumming of a wild stampede.

The men sprang to their feet and grasped their rifles.

“The horses!” cried Douglas; “some one has stampeded them!  We must get them back at any cost.”

“Don’t go out that way,” remonstrated Dorothy, as they made for the door.  “You don’t know who may be waiting for you there.  There is a back door leading out from the next room, but you’d better look out carefully through the window first.”

The wisdom of the girl’s advice was so obvious that they at once proceeded to put it into execution.