The fugitive needs no second invitation. His horse's head is turned towards the never-so-welcome refuge. Amid a shower of bullets and arrows from his discomfited pursuers he gallops up the gradual slope which lies between himself and safety, and, fainting, exhausted, speechless, more dead than alive, at length flings himself upon the ground at his rescuers' feet. Vipan's attention is for the moment more taken up with the red warriors than with the man he has saved from their ruthless clutches. The whole party has now withdrawn beyond range, and is busily discussing the sudden turn affairs have taken. Then turning to the panting and exhausted man stretched at full length upon the ground with closed eyes, he remarks drily: "You've had a narrow squeak for it, friend. I don't think your scalp could sit much more lightly than it has done within the last few minutes short of coming off altogether." But the fugitive seemed not to hear. His whole attention was fixed-- riveted--upon the beautiful face bending over him in alarm--solicitude-- then unbounded surprise. "Yseulte!" he stammered. "Yseulte! Is it really you, or am I dead or dreaming?" "Why it's Geoffry. Geoffry Vallance! Why, Geoffry, where on earth _have_ you dropped from?" "Er--I was trying to catch up your--er--Major Winthrop's party--and lost my way," he answered stupidly--rubbing his eyes in sheer bewilderment. CHAPTER TWENTY THREE. THE "TENDERFOOT." If Yseulte Santorex stood lost in amazement at this wholly unlooked-for meeting, there was really considerable excuse for some upsetting of her mental poise. Beyond a brief and formal farewell in the presence of her family, she had not seen her former admirer since that passionate and despairing declaration of his in the summer meadows which skirted the pleasant Lant, and neither at that time nor since had the faintest idea crossed her mind that he contemplated any such undertaking as Western or any other travel. And now here he was, flung, so to say, by Fate at her very feet, escaping by the narrowest chance from the hands of hostile savages, the most ruthless in the world. And she had been mainly instrumental in saving him.