The thatch of brown hair, curling slightly at the ends, turned gently, and back came the whisper, so soft that it could not have been heard more than a foot away: "Phil, good old Phil! You’ve come for me! I might have known it!" "Are they still looking at the dance?" "Yes, they can’t keep their eyes off it." "Then now is your only chance. You must get out of this medicine lodge, and I will help you. I’m going to cut through the buffalo hide low down, then you must stoop and push your way out at the slash, when they’re not looking." "All right," said Bill Breakstone, and Phil detected the thrill of joy in his tone. Phil stooped and bearing hard upon the knife, cut a slash through the hide from the height of his waist to the ground. "Now, Bill," he whispered, "when you think the time has come, press through." "All right," again came the answer with that leaping tone in it. Phil put the knife back in its scabbard, and, pressing closely against the hide beside the slash, waited. Bill did not come. A minute, another, and a third passed. He heard the monotonous whistling, the steady chant, and the ceaseless beat of the dancer’s feet, but Breakstone made no sound. Once more he pressed his lips to the slit, and said in the softest of tones: "Are you coming, Bill?" No answer, and again he waited interminable minutes. Then the lips of the buffalo skin parted, and a shoulder appeared at the opening. It was thrust farther, and a head and face, the head and face of Bill Breakstone, followed. Then he slipped entirely out, and the tough buffalo hide closed up behind him. Phil seized his hand, and the two palms closed in a strong grasp. "I had to wait until nobody was looking my way," whispered Breakstone, "and then it was necessary to make it a kind of sleight-of-hand performance. I slipped through so quick that any one looking could only see the place where I had been." Then he added in tones of irrepressible admiration: "It was well done, it was nobly done, it was grandly done, Sir Philip of the Night and the Knife." "Hark to that!" said Phil, "they miss you already!" A shout, sharp, shrill, wholly different from all the other sounds, came from within the great medicine lodge. It was the signal of alarm. It was not repeated, and the whistling and wailing went on, but Phil and Breakstone knew that warriors would be out in an instant, seeking the lost captive. "We must run for it," whispered Breakstone, as they stood among the trees. "It’s too late," said Phil. Warriors with torches had already appeared at either end of the grove, but the light did not yet reach where the two stood in the thick darkness, with the gentle rain sifting through the leaves upon them. Phil saw no chance to escape, because the light of the torches reached into the river bed, and then, like lightning, the idea came to him.