"Attack purty soon—keep eye peeled—don't see notting?"
"Nothing at all," replied the Rifleman, who, all this time, was peering through a chink in the logs and not looking at the Indian.
Taking it for granted that if the Huron saw no danger there could be none, Dernor turned toward Edith, and asked, in that low, passionate tone which he instinctively assumed in addressing her:
"And how do you feel, dear Edith, all this time?"
"My courage, I think, will bear up as long as yours," she answered, with a faint smile.
"It will bear up to the end, then," he added. Then looking at her a moment, he continued: "Edith, how you must feel toward me for bringing you into this trouble! I have been thinking of it for the last day or two."
"Did you do it on purpose?" she asked. "That is, did you know we should be pursued and persecuted as we have been when we started?"
"Know it? of course not. I would have been shot before I would have come."
"Then why do you ask me such a question? No, Lewis, I do not blame you in the least. On the contrary, I shall never be able to express the gratitude I feel for what you have done."
This was the first time Edith had addressed the Rifleman by his given name, and it gave him a peculiar pleasure which it would be difficult to describe. He was only restrained from approaching by the reflection that he would cut a most ridiculous figure in the presence of the Huron. His feelings were now such that, upon his own account alone, he would have welcomed several days' siege. In fact, he would have cared very little had Oonamoo been a hundred miles distant just then.