a perch on the side of the world, a huge eyrie with cliffs above and cliffs below, with apparently only that little passage, the old creek bed, by which one might get there.  Dorothy realised that people might pass and repass at the foot of the hill on the other side and never dream there was such a place behind it.  Still less would they imagine that there was a narrow cleft by which one could get through.  Moreover, a couple of Indians stationed at the narrow track could easily keep two hundred foe-men at bay.  Dorothy realised that she was now as effectually a prisoner as if she had been hidden away in an impregnable fortress.

The party descended a gentle slope, and there, in a saucer-shaped piece of low-lying ground fringed with saskatoon and choke-cherry trees, they pitched their camp.

For the first three days Dorothy was almost inclined to give way to the depression of spirits which her surroundings and the enforced inaction naturally encouraged.  Though the Red folk were not actually unkind to her, still, their ways were not such as commended themselves to a well-brought-up white girl.  Fortunately, the Falling Star was well disposed to her, and did all she could to make Dorothy feel her captivity as little as possible.  The two would sit together in a shady place on the edge of the great cliff for hours, gazing out upon the magnificent prospect that outspread itself far beneath them, and the Indian girl, to try and woo the spirit of her white sister from communing too much within itself, would tell her many of the quaint, beautiful legends of the Indian Long Ago.

On the third day, just as Dorothy was beginning to wonder if it were not possible to steal out of the wigwam one night when Falling Star slept soundly, and, by evading the sentries—­who might also chance to be asleep—­make her way out through the narrow pass and so back to freedom, there was an arrival in camp that exceedingly astonished her.  She was sitting some little distance back from the edge of the great cliff with Falling Star near at hand, when some one behind her spoke.

“Ah, Mam’selle,” said the voice, “it ees ze good how-do-you-do I will be wish you.”

Dorothy turned, and to her surprise Bastien Lagrange stood before her.

Despite the jauntiness of his speech, and the evident desire he evinced to appear perfectly at his ease, Dorothy at once detected an under-current of shame-facedness and apprehension in Bastien’s manner.  His presence urged that he was no longer a prisoner with Poundmaker’s band.  What did it portend?

In her eagerness to learn something of her father, Pasmore, and the others, Dorothy sprang to her feet and ran towards Lagrange.  But that gentleman gave her such a significant look of warning that she stopped short.  He glanced meaningly at the Indian woman, Falling Star.  Dorothy understood, and a presentiment that she was about to be disappointed in the feeble-hearted half-breed took possession of her.