The Indian groaned and staggered backward. Her voice came lower. “Leave me, Towaye! The Daughter of the Sun hath spoken!” He stepped back, until his knees weakened suddenly and he sank moaning to the ground. His head lay against the viny side of the natural doorway; his gleaming body stretched across the threshold. Long the heavy lids blinked with a great effort to keep awake; but the mind, utterly unaccustomed to the fumes of wine, succumbed at last. He fell asleep. Gyll pulled her skirts above the knee, and, beckoning to her companion, would have stepped over the prone figure had not Eleanor detained her. “It cannot last. We shall lose ourselves in the woods and he will readily overtake us. Then—” “Ay, you are right,” said Gyll. “I had not thought of that; ’twould indeed be madness.” And the two women, once more seating themselves in a corner, surveyed the human barrier before them. As the firelight waned, Gyll lay on her back again, looking up at the tracery of interlaced grape-vines which were now but vague arabesques on the leafy ceiling. The Indian’s head rested on a similar vine, which formed a pendent arc, a shadowy crescent, beneath his neck. With a sidelong glance at the recumbent figure, and particularly at the head’s posture, Gyll saw that the low-hanging vine on which the cranium rested was about three inches thick and very strong; moreover, it was braided like a woman’s hair. “Like a woman’s hair.” Several times her thoughts repeated the simile, and grew more daring with the repetition. She whispered to Eleanor, and then, a second time lifting her skirts well above the knee, stepped over Towaye and out of the arbor. Her tread was wonderfully light and soundless. Near the fire she stooped and picked up something from the ground that lay near a birch bow and a bundle of flint-headed arrows. Eleanor saw her bending figure, the petticoats still raised to prevent their rustling on the leaves, the red silk hose, the golden cataract of hair, and remembered that picture always. Gyll returned. Frazer’s poniard was in her hand. Once within the arbor she appeared to hesitate as with a new purpose, and lifted her weapon as though to strike the swarthy breast, but could not. Her poised arm seemed paralyzed. Eleanor, who uttered a low whisper of horrified remonstrance, need not have done so. The impulse was there, but the masculine nerve and implacability were lacking. She resumed her first purpose. Cutting the silken band about her fellow-prisoner’s wrists, she requested Eleanor to respond in kind. Their hands were at last free. Gyll hesitated, turning the bandages about in her fingers. “Nay,” she said at last, “he could easily tear them.”