Those in charge of the safety of the township had their hands full. They might sally forth in force, as they frequently did, with the object of rolling back the danger that threatened; an object sometimes accomplished, sometimes not, for the rolling back was not invariably all on one side. But whichever way the attempt would go, the wily foe was sure to be in position again almost immediately, whence, massed around the very edifice that symbolised the domination of those threatened, the defiant thunder of his war-song would reach their ears. Of all the narrow escapes from the widespread massacre which at that time were in everybody's mouth, none perhaps commanded general attention so much as that of Nidia Commerell. It was so fraught with the dramatic element, being in fact not one escape, but a series of them. Her personality, too, imparted to it an additional interest; this refined and attractive girl, brought up amid every comfort, suddenly to be thrown by rude contrast from the luxurious appointments of her peaceful English home into the red surroundings of massacre and of death. Again, the circumstances of her wanderings appealed strongly to the romantic side, and people looked knowingly at each other, and pronounced John Ames to be a singularly fortunate individual--would be, at least, were it not for the fact that nobody knew whether he was alive or dead; indeed, the latter contingency seemed the more probable. There was one to whom Nidia's reappearance was as little short of restoration to life for herself, and that one was Mrs Bateman, for to her the girl was more than all the world put together--far more than her own husband, and she had no children. When the first tidings of the outbreak, and the massacre of the Hollingworths, had come in, the poor woman had been simply frantic. The fact that Nidia had not been included in the tragedy, but had disappeared, brought with it small comfort. She pictured her darling in the power of brutal savages, or wandering alone in the wilderness to perish miserably of starvation and exhaustion; perhaps, even, to fall a prey to wild animals. Was it for this she had allowed her to leave her English home "for a peep into wild life," as they had put it when the much debated question had arisen? Not even the dreadful task of breaking the news to Nidia's relatives occurred to her now, her grief was too whole-hearted, too unmixed. Her husband came in for a convenient safety-valve, though. Why had he induced either of them to come near such a hateful country? He was the real murderer, not these vile savages; and having with admirable and usual feminine logic clapped the saddle on the wrong horse to her heart's content, and caused that estimable engineer mildly to wish he had never been born, she hunted him off with one of the relief forces, together with every man she could succeed in pressing into her service. Indeed, it used to be said that, could she have had her way, just about