Like a flash Lettice sprang up. At her feet lay the man’s pistol which he had dropped. The girl picked it up. Providence had come to her rescue. She raised the pistol, but almost immediately her hand dropped to her side. She noted that the man had lifted the head of his former companion to a more comfortable position. To shoot him would be murder, she reflected. She could not, no, she could not. Yet her own life and Mr. Baldwin’s lay in the balance. Now her adversary was about to rise. The horror of what might come next rushed over her, and she hesitated no longer, but darted forward, and dealt the man a desperate blow on the head with the butt of the pistol. He dropped heavily by the side of his fallen comrade, and was very still. Had she killed or only stunned him? She shuddered and turned aside. Meanwhile Mr. Baldwin and his opponent fought for their lives. Lettice’s friend had discharged the last load from his pistol, and now it was a question of which would prove the best man in a hand-to-hand fight? Lettice watched them breathlessly. The strength of one or the other must at last give out. Suppose it should be her one dependence, this desperate man who was giving his assailant no time for anything but to attend to the matter in hand. Breathlessly Lettice put into execution a plan. If Mr. Baldwin could only hold out long enough, she might save both herself and him. She quickly undid the long silken scarf she wore, tied one end tightly around the wrist of the man she had sent to the ground, and then tied the other end to a little tree under which they had been sitting. It was sufficiently small for her to be able to make her tether quite secure. The man began to move slightly, and Lettice realized that he was merely stunned by her blow. Another moment and he might recover sufficiently to add to the hopelessness of the situation. In the distance there was a faint plash of oars; it might be that those who approached would reënforce these assailants. Her wits were sharpened by despair. She leaned over and extricated the pistol from the belt of the wounded man, and rushed to a safe distance from her prisoner. If he had a knife it would take him but a moment to cut his bonds as soon as he should be aware of them. She must act quickly, for the regular plash of the oars came nearer and more near. Ellicott Baldwin, still struggling desperately, heard a cry, “Look out!” A shot whizzed through the air, and his adversary loosened his hold, and in a second was felled to the earth. Lettice’s pistol had done good service. She had wounded the man in the ankle, for she had purposely fired low. “Here, here,” she cried, thrusting the second pistol into Mr. Baldwin’s hand, and he, with one dazed look, rushed to where she stood. CHAPTER XII. _Escape._