The citizen-Republican. (Scotland, Bon Homme County, S.D.) 1???-19??, 1911-01-19
CHAPTER XI.

Okyada, my servant, entered my bed
room at 10 o'clock that very night, and
when l crossed the landing to wake
Joan she did not answer me, nor could
my diligent search discover her to be
In the house at all.
And the minutes of my opportunity
were precious beyond all reckoning.
Good God!" I cried, that I must
leave her to such men and to such a
Judgment"
For I knew that it must be so, and
THAT by flight alone, and the ;cer;E,ss CT
flight, would our salvation be won.
Okyada has never been a mar Of
many words. I think he uttered but
two that night as we crossed the val
ley garden and made for the river
bank. "Shoot, MASTER" he said, mean
Ing that if any barred the way the
time for passive fight had passed. I
nodded my head in answer, and pressed
closer upon his heels as he entered the
maze of shrubs which defended the
gully. The silence about us had be-
come a burden to the nerves. Was it
possible that none of Imroth's men
watched the garden? Indeed, for a mo-
ment that appeared to be the truth.
We gained the bank of the whirl-
pool of yesterday, n for a few min
iutes lay fiat in the shadow Of the
great boarder of the rock which rises
up above the gully. Behind us we could
= SSp SiS SillCh vi llS uSIl-
room I had just left and the clear
shape of the silent chalet. The gardens
and the woods were so many patches
Of black against an azure sky of night.
The water beloWsus flowed, in color a
deep indigo, between walls of lightless
rock, in a bed of polished stone. Not
q breath of wind stirred the pines upon
the hillside. We could not longer see
the ocean without or the friendly lights
it showed to us. We might have been
fugitives upon a desert island; and this
deception would a continued posi-
BILE, until the sound of q distant rifle
shot awoke a thousand echoes in the
hills and shattered in a single instant
the dream of security we had found so
pleasing.
Okyada sprang up at the sound and
began to speak with an earnestness Of
which he was rarely guilty.
''They have found the honorable cap
tain-quick, master, we must go to
him!" he aid
My answer was to point up to the
sloping lawn of the garden we had left.
There, in single file, the figures of sew
Ell men. crossing the grass boldly to-
ward the chalet, were clearly to be
discerned. I had scarcely observed
them when q movement in the shrub
berry Immediately behind us betrayed
the presence of others-three in all,
who came out to the waters edge at
a place not III yards from where we
stood, and, hating there a little while
to inspect the gully, afterwards made
off through the woods, as though to
Join the others above.
"Old Val gets such notions into his
woolly cranium," said one of them as
he went; IF there's any Englishman
going across there tonight, I'm derned
if he amt a-mermaid."
We listened to them, crouching low
to the rock, and with our revolvers
ready to our lands Had the most
!trifling accident occurred, q falling peb-
BILE or a clumsy movement betrayed
us, that, l am convinced, would have
been the whole story of the night. But
we lay as men long practiced in the
arts of silence, and not until the trees
hid the men from our sight did Okyada
stand up again and prepare to cross
the gully.
GO first, master" he said; here is
orable captain, wait yonder above. We
will bring them the good w
Now l saw that, as he spoke, he had
caught up a rope which had been dex-
terously fixed to a bowlder upon the OPP
posite bank of the stream and allowed
to trail in the water while he went to
fetch me from the house. Fixing this
as cleverly to the rock upon our side,
he made a bridge by which any strong
lad coglld nave crossed with the pool
as low as 1t then was; and no sooner
had he given the signal thar I swung
myself out and almost Immediately
found a footing upon the farther shore.
His WI passage, when first he crossed,
must have been very p%erilous, I thought
and could but imagine that he had
thrown the rope over first and trusted
to the graphing iron affixed to the end
upon the garden side. This, however,
was but a speculation. He crossed now
n q ~ Ehnl RI ~ ~ ~ nrraf hn~ rryAL @-~A
the knot from the bowider and threw
the rope In. If all our acts We're cool
and collected. I set the fact down to
the knowledge that We were prisoners