"Captain Studdiford, I believe we had better turn back." Her face grew crimson beneath his calm gaze. "As you like. You will grant me time to adjust my saddle girth; it is slipping," he said coolly, dismounting without another word. They were fully three miles from the village, and in a dense piece of forest. On either side of the narrow road grew the thickest of underbrush with the great, gaunt trees stretching above like silent sentinels. The girl's mind was chaos; her thoughts were changing and interchanging like leaves before the whirling wind. She knew that she admired this man, and that something even sweeter was beginning to throb its way into her heart. A half smile came to her troubled face as she thought of the war-painted plotters two miles away, waiting to make a coward of her hero. A touch of remorse came to her as she remembered her part in the play, and that the plot would have been carried out had she not seen the great swing of that fearful sword. What havoc it would have wrought! And he was to leave Jamestown! Without a friend, he had said. How could he say that? In the midst of these varying thoughts she allowed her softening eyes to wander from him toward the trees above and the straggling brush beneath their knotty limbs. A suppressed scream called the Captain's attention to her staring eyes. They were blinking with consternation. Deep in the underbrush she had seen the form of an Indian warrior! Horrors! The sword! "What do you see?" cried he, staring toward the now deserted brush. "Nothing--nothing!" she gasped. "Yes--I mean, that red bird! See? Do shoot it for me--I must have it! Isn't it beautiful?" She was excitedly pointing toward a red bird in the top branches of a big oak. He drew his pistols and deliberately aimed with one of them. The shot missed and the bird darted away. "Oh, goodness!" she cried. "Try the other one!" "But the bird is gone." "Is it? So it is--but, quick! See if you can cut off that twig up there--the one with three red leaves. I wager you cannot! Quick, and then we will ride for home." "Why are you so excited?" "I am not the least bit excited--I never am! Why do you not shoot at that twig?" "You try it," he surprised her by saying, pushing a pistol into her hand. Without a word or aim she blazed away at the sky and his firearms were useless. She handed the smoking pistol to him with a laugh. "Would it not be awful if Indians came upon us!" she cried, with strange exultation. "But mount, and race with me to the spring!" As the Captain placed his foot in the stirrup a yell burst from the thicket, an arrow whizzed above their heads, and a half-a-dozen, fierce warriors were dashing toward them. "Do not use your sword!" she screamed. Before the bewildered soldier could catch his breath an ugly brave was in the road, not ten feet away, knife in hand. Out whizzed the sword! Kate screamed in agony, clasping her hand over her eyes. "They are friends! Do not strike!"