The others murmured their relief.

“Open the door!” cried Strange.  “I will speak to them.”

Ambrose fell back a little.  The other men crowded around Strange, urging him to be careful of himself.  Strange was doing the modest hero!

It was a pretty little play.  At the sight of it a harsh jangle of laughter rang inside Ambrose.  Colina took no part in the scene.

Strange stepped out on the porch.  Ambrose heard him speaking the uncouth Kakisa tongue, and heard the murmur of replies.  He would have given a bale of furs to understand what was being said.

The exchange was brief.  Strange presently stepped inside and said: 

“They say they want their leader—­Ambrose Doane.”

A dead silence fell on the little group.  They turned and stared at Ambrose.  He, for the moment, was stunned with astonishment.  He was aware only of Colina’s stricken, white face.  She looked as if she had been shot.

“They say they are ready to go,” Strange went on.  “They promise to make no more trouble if we give Doane up.  If we refuse, they say they will take him, anyway.”

“It’s an infernal lie!” cried Ambrose desperately.  “I am no leader of theirs!”

She did not believe him.  Her eyes lost all their luster and her lovely face looked ashen.  She seemed about to fall.

Giddings went to her aid, but she pushed him away.  She seemed unconscious of the presence of the ethers.  Her accusing eyes were fixed on Ambrose.

“I believed in you,” she murmured in a dead voice.  “I believed in you!  Oh, God!” Her hands were flung up in a despairing gesture.  “Let him go!” she cried to Macfarlane over her shoulder, and ran down the hall and up the stairs.

CHAPTER XXVII.

A CHANGE OF JAILERS.

There was a significant silence in the passage when Colina had gone.

Finally Macfarlane said stubbornly, “He’s my prisoner.  It’s my duty to hold him against any odds.  It’s the first rule of the service.”

Giddings and Pringle urgently remonstrated with him.  Strange held apart as if he considered it none of his business.  At last, with a deprecating air, he added his voice to the other men’s.

“Look here,” he said smoothly; “you know best, of course; but aren’t there times when a soldier must make his own rules?  All of us men would stand by you gladly, but there’s a sick man up-stairs that they have been taught to hate.  And a woman.”

Macfarlane gave in with a shrug.  “I suppose you’ll stand by me if I’m hauled up for it,” he grumbled.

He drew his revolver and stood aside to let Ambrose pass.  The others likewise drew back, as from one marked with the plague.  Every face was hard with scorn.

Ambrose kept his eyes straight ahead.  When he appeared on the porch, cries, apparently of welcome, were raised by the Kakisas.