“What is the matter with you?” she asked the taller of the two rebels.  “Don’t you want to return to Battleford?”

“Eet is too late how, and we want you,” explained the first villain.  “Come down queeck.  Eet is no time we have to waste.  Eef we have to fetch you eet will be ver’ bad for you.”

“Dear me!” remarked Dorothy, outwardly keeping cool, but not without serious misgivings.  “I can’t think what you can want with me.  But, as you’re so anxious, I’ll come down—­in a few minutes—­when my father and the others return.”

“Ze horses they in big snowdreeft stuck and ze man cannot leaf.  Come down now—­we want you!”

It was obvious to Dorothy that the two rebels, in taking a circuitous route to the hut, had come upon the horses stuck fast in a snowdrift, and that her father and Jacques and Bastien were busily engaged in trying to extricate them.  Knowing that the girl must have been left alone with the fire-arms, the two rebels had hurried back to secure them, with wild, half-formed ideas of revenge stirring their primitive natures.

Dorothy’s policy was to keep cool, in order not to precipitate any action on their part.

“Co-om,” said the taller one, whose villainous appearance was not lessened by a cast in his right eye, “we want you to gif us to eat.  Co-om down.”

“Goodness! have you eaten all we gave you already?  You must have wonderful appetites, to be sure.  If you look in the sleigh—­”

“Pshaw! co-om you down and get.  What for you sit all alone up there?  Eet is not good to sit zere, and you will catch cold.”

“Oh, don’t trouble about me, thanks.  I’m all right; I don’t catch cold easily—­”

What the cross-eyed one ejaculated at this point will not bear repetition.  He actually so far forgot himself as to threaten Dorothy with bodily violence if she did not at once obey him.  But as the girl only remained seated, with apparent unconcern, upon the biscuit tin, and gazed mildly into his face, it became evident to the big rebel that he was only wasting words in thus addressing her.  He prepared to ascend the snow bank, jump thence on to the roof, and fetch her down by force.

Dorothy, like Sister Ann of Bluebeard fame, gazed anxiously around and listened with all the intensity born of her desperate state; but there was nothing to be seen or heard.  Only Bruin had risen again and was coming slowly towards the hut.  A bright scheme suggested itself to the girl; but she would wait until the cross-eyed one discovered how utterly rotten and soft the snow-bank had become before putting it into practice.  She must gain all the time she could.