He thought he saw an expression in her eyes that was strange to him, though he fancied himself familiar with most of her moods. “Tell it me,” he said, hastily rising--to the good fortune of one of the company. “Don’t you know ’twas _I_ tried to save you?” she asked him in a low voice. “But there was something false--the shadow; it was the shadows that were false. Are you going to throw me away for that? How could I help it? I did my best. You were enchanted, and I walked singing into the castle of the giants to save you; and when I came you were flown. Who tempted you away?” “Go now, Darda,” he said gently. “I will talk to you by and by.” “I must know first. They said; but my brain burst like glass, and then I could not remember.” He took a step towards her; but she backed from him, and cried out in a sudden triumphant voice: “I can tell her!--the white woman who would set her wit against steel. See now if she can!” In a moment she had snapped her hands to the front--and a bright blade was in one of them--and she was running to where Miss Angela was seated at the table. Tuke was upon the mad creature’s heels--his hand clutched at her shoulder. The lady, unconscious that she was the destined victim, was only turned about in her chair with a curious face. It all passed in an instant--a very dramatic episode. The vicious arm lunged out--the pursuer struck up--there flashed an arc of light as the blade somersaulted in the shine of the candles, and there broke a shrill scream and a jarring flurry of chair-legs as the company scrambled to its feet. Then were to be seen Darda standing passively in the grasp of her captor, and the victim fallen into a faint against the shoulder of her neighbour, who looked down upon her with a face all quivering with fright and fury. And: “Curse me!” cried Lord Dunlone; “why doesn’t somebody come and take her? I never was in such a nest of cursed brigands in my life before.” CHAPTER L. The hapless master of “Delsrop” paced his dining-hall in a rare conflict of emotions. The wine gleamed on the table; but none was there to call a toast in it. His hospitality was abused; his company retired; and he was audibly cursing that cantrip of Fortune that had endowed him with a wilderness and a party of lunatics and cut-throats to people it, and had made of it at the same time a perfect purgatory of misunderstanding. “Now,” he groaned to himself, “if I am not in the mind to call in Jack Fern and his gang to resolve a problem that gets beyond me!”