The Cherokees waited till the master-executioner was out of sight among the trees.  Then they set up their infernal howling again, and the fire-lighter ran to fetch a fresh brand.

“Courage, lad! ’twill soon be over now,” said I, hearing a groan from my poor Dick.

His reply was a chattering curse, not upon Falconnet or the Indians, but upon his malady, the tertian fever.

“Now, by all the fiends!  I’m chilling again, Jack!” he gasped.  “If these cursed wood-wolves mark it, they’ll set it down to woman cowardice and that will break my heart!”

Again I bade him be of good courage, assuring him, not derisively, as it looks when ’tis written out, that the fire would presently medicine the chilling.  In the middle of the saying the lighted brand was fetched and thrust among our fagotings, and the upward-curling smoke wreaths made me gasp and strangle at the finish.

For a little time after the sucking in of that first smoke-breath—­nature’s anodyne for any of her poor creatures doomed to die by fire—­I saw and heard less clearly and suffered only by anticipation.  But to this day the smell of burning pine-wood is like a sleeping potion to me; and the sleep it brings is full of dreams vaguely troubled.

So, while the Indians danced and leaped about us, brandishing their weapons and chanting the captives’ death song, and while the blue and yellow tongues of flame mounted from twig to twig, climbing stealthily to flick at us like little vanishing demon whips, I saw and heard and felt as one remote from all the torture turmoil of the moment.  Through the dimming haze of sleeping sensibility the dancing savages became as marionettes in some cunning puppet show; and the blood stained figures stiffening against their log took shapes less horrifying.

’Twas Dick’s voice, coming, as it seemed, from a mighty distance, that broke the spell and brought me back to quickened agonies.  He spoke in panting gasps, as the smoke would let him.

“One word, Jack, before we go—­go to our own place.  He said—­he said she would be free to—­to marry him.  Tell me ...  O God in Heaven!”

His agony was a lash to cut me deeper than any flicking demon whip of flame, yet I must needs add to it.

“Aye, Richard, I have wronged you, wronged you desperately; can you hear me yet?  I say I have wronged you, and I shall die the easier if you’ll forgive—­”

Once more the smoke, rising again in denser clouds, cut me off, and through the blinding blue haze of it I saw the Indians running up with green branches to beat it down lest it should spoil their sport oversoon by smothering us out of hand.

With the chance to gasp and breathe again I would have confessed in full to Richard Jennifer and had him shrive me if he would.  But when I called, he did not answer.  His head was rolling from side to side, and his handsome young face was all drawn and distorted as in the awful grimaces of the death throe.