My brain was in a whirl. It seemed as if I could see a dozen hideous faces swaying round and round in a circle before me; sparks of fire danced before my eyes, and in another instant I would have been sent out of this world beyond a peradventure. All this I realized despite the mental confusion caused by the suffocation, and then suddenly I felt the fingers relax. I staggered back against a tree, and when my adversary sank slowly to his knees, and then downward until he lay prone upon the earth, falling in a heap as does one who has been killed while standing, I believed it was all a trick of the imagination--that while I was passing into the Beyond this picture, and this belief that I was no longer being choked, was but a fancy born of death. Then while I swayed to and fro, striving to collect my scattered senses, a voice whispered in my ear as a hand was passed over my face: “Did he wound you, or are you only half-choked?” “A good bit more than _half_-choked,” I replied, now beginning to understand that I had to do with a friend, and yet bewildered because one had appeared so unexpectedly. “Is it you, Giles March?” I bent down as I spoke, and to my utter amazement did I see Esther Hinchman standing before me. She it was who had stricken down the savage when he was so near to making an end of me, and I believe the astonishment caused by such fact was greater than the bewilderment from which I suffered while nearly suffocated. “How did you come here?” I asked, regardless of the fact that it was dangerous even to whisper in that place, which we knew must be peopled with our enemies. “I followed you out from the cave, fearing lest something of this sort might happen, and knowing that you and Giles March were to separate.” “But how was it that Mistress Morley so nearly lost her head as to allow you to come?” I continued, and she replied in a whisper light as the morning breeze: “There was no reason why I should stay. I could be of no assistance in the cave, and here I was needed, as it so chanced. Is it in your mind, Jonathan Ogden, that we girls of Wyoming Valley should have no part in this desperate struggle, or do you believe we ought to sit with folded arms, while our fathers and our brothers sacrifice their lives in our behalf?” It was folly for me to remain in that place talking with the girl, when duty demanded that I ascend the mountain at as nearly an equal pace with Giles March as might be possible, and, besides, it was dangerous to indulge in conversation. Therefore it was that, taking her by the arm lest we be separated in the darkness, I led her by my side, continuing the advance as stealthily as was in my power, and she knew enough of woodcraft to be able to make her way through the undergrowth with no more of noise than might have been caused by a falling leaf.