Lucius, deadly pale, with a queer strained look in his eyes, his knees knocking together, and his body swaying from side to side, was standing where Ephraim had left him, apparently unable to proceed. ‘What has struck ye, Luce?’ asked Ephraim anxiously. ‘Why don’t ye come?’ ‘I can’t,’ gasped Lucius. ‘I daren’t. It makes me sick to think of it. I’d rather die.’ ‘Waal,’ returned Ephraim, hugely disappointed, ‘ef ye can’t, ye can’t. I’d fergotten how ye felt about it. No matter, we’ll make fer the woods on the other side.—Ah, by time!’ He rushed back to Lucius and seized him by the hand. ‘Thar’s no help fer it, Luce,’ he cried. ‘Ye _must_ come onless ye reely want ter die. I kin see the gleam er bay’nets through the trees on the other side. We shall be headed off. Thar’s no other way.’ He dragged Lucius forward with all his might; but the boy hung back, sliding his feet over the ground like a jibbing pony. So they went until rather more than half the distance had been covered, and then all at once a loud shout was raised behind them, and Ephraim, looking hastily round, uttered a groan of despair. Out from the coverts at the far end of the clearing rushed Colonel Spriggs, his face aflame with excitement, and waving his sword as he drew near. [Illustration] CHAPTER XVI. OLD GRIZZLY’S SACRIFICE. As Ephraim saw their terrible enemy running towards them, followed by a number of soldiers, his heart, stout as it was, sank within him; for Lucius, in the spasm of unreasoning terror which the mere sight of the balloon had induced in him, hung back, a dead-weight, and refused to move in response to either force or persuasion. It is said that a person in the grip of severe sea-sickness would, if informed that the ship was about to sink under him, calmly accept the fact, and welcome the change as a blessed relief from present suffering. If this be true, then Lucius was in very much the same state of mind. The recollection of his balloon experiences filled him with a hideous, incapacitating fear. To ascend, he believed, meant death. Death was behind him in another shape, but compared with the former it seemed absolutely enchanting. These were his thoughts, if he thought at all, and in answer to Ephraim’s wild entreaty that he would hurry on, he did but hang back the more, while he muttered huskily words which fell in broken, meaningless syllables from his pale and trembling lips.