"Is there any spice in life to compare to a little dash o' danger ?" Whereat I smiled at her heartily, and said to Boyd: "We pass not outside our lines, of course." "Oh, no!" he answered carelessly.

Which left me still reluctant and unconvinced.

But he walked forward with Lana through the open forest, and I followed beside Lois; and, without any signal from me my Indians quietly glided out ahead, silently extending as flankers on either side.
"Do you notice what they are about ?" said I sourly.

"Even here within whisper of the fort ?" "Are you not happy to see me, Euan ?" she cooed close to my ear.
"Not here; inside that log curtain yonder." "But there is a dragon yonder," she whispered, with mischief adorable in her sparkling eyes; then slipped hastily beyond my reach, saying: "Oh, Euan! Forget not our vows, but let our conduct remain seemly still, else I return." I had no choice, for we were now passing our inner pickets, where a line of bush-huts, widely set, circled the main camp.

There were some few people wandering along this line--officers, servants, boatmen, soldiers off duty, one or two women.
Just within the lines there was a group of people from which a fiddle sounded; and I saw Boyd and Lana turn thither; and we followed them.
Coming up to see who was making such scare-crow music, Lana said in a low voice to us: "It's an old, old man--more than a hundred years old, he tells us--who has lived on the Ouleout undisturbed among the Indians until yesterday, when we burnt the village.