“I am.”

“And a prisoner?”

“Yes.”

Extending a small, warm hand—which Douglas quickly imprisoned in his broad palm—she remarked naïvely:

“You risked your life to rescue me from danger, although you are an enemy of my people. I will not forget your valor. I will do what I can to procure your release——”

“Perhaps, La Violette, you are not aware that your rescuer is my prisoner,” Bradford interjected, laughing.

Petulantly stamping her moccasined foot, she replied proudly:

“I neither know nor care whose prisoner he is. He has saved me from a horrible death; I will befriend him.”

Then hastily withdrawing her hand from Ross’s detaining clasp:

“But my father! Where is he?”