indescribable suffering, shame, and death.  Fanny Harvey has behaved like a heroine, as the two troopers remarked, and Ruth has done her best to follow her sister’s lead.  Yet they, too, now realize how close and stifling the heavy atmosphere is growing.  Is it to be black hole of Calcutta over again?  Even as he takes her hand in his Drummond reads the dread in Ruth’s tearless face.  Even as he holds it and whispers words of hope and comfort there is a heavy, continuous, crashing sound at the mouth of the cave, just in front of the rock barricade, and he springs back to learn the cause.

“They’re heaving down logs and brushwood, sir,” whispers Costigan.  “They mean to roast us out if they can’t do anything else.”

More thunder and crash; more heaping up of resinous logs from the cliffs above them.  Some of the men beg to be allowed to push out and die fighting, but Drummond sternly refuses.  “At the worst,” he says, “we can retire into the back cave; we have abundant water there.  The air will last several hours yet, and I tell you help will come,—­must come, before the day is much older.”

Two o’clock.  Hissing flames and scorching heat block the cavern entrance.  The rocky barrier grows hotter and hotter; the air within denser and more stifling.  The water in the canteens and pails is no longer cool.  It is hardly even cooling.  The few men who remain with Drummond in the front of the cave are lying full length upon the floor.  The pain in Drummond’s battered head has become intense:  it is almost maddening.  Wing is moaning and unconscious.  Walsh is incoherent and raving.  All are panting and well-nigh exhausted.  The front of the cave is like an oven.  Overcome by the heat, one or two of the men are edging towards the inner cave, but Drummond orders them back.  To the very last the lives of those fair girls must be protected and cherished.  In silence, almost in desperation, the men obey, and lie down again, face downward, their heads at the rear wall of the cave.

And then Costigan comes crawling to the lieutenant’s side,—­

“Have you heard any more logs thrown down lately, sir?”

“No, corporal.  I have heard nothing.”

“They were yellin’ and shootin’ out there in the gulch half an hour ago.  Have ye heard no more of it, sir?”

“No; no sound but the flames.”

“Glory be to God, thin!  D’ye know what it manes, sir?”

“I know what I hope,” is Drummond’s faint answer.  “Our fellows are close at hand, for the Indians are clearing out.”

“Close at hand, is it?” cries Costigan, in wild excitement, leaping to his feet.  “Listen, sir!  Listen, all of ye’s!  D’ye hear that?—­and that?  And there now!  Oh, Holy Mother of God! isn’t that music?  Thim’s the thrumpets of ‘K’ throop!”

Ay.  Out along the crests of the winding canon the rifles are ringing again.  The cheers of troopers, bounding like goats up the rocky sides, are answered by clatter of hoof and snort of excited steeds in the rocky depths below.  “Here we are, lads!  Dismount!  Lively now!” a well-known voice is ordering, and Costigan fairly screams in ecstasy of joy, “Tear away the fire, captain, an’ then we’ll heave over the rocks.”