door of the drawing-room, where he had shortly before been in conversation with the Captain’s wife, was wide open, and from it rang the cries for help, whose desperate tones brought home to the Captain the certainty that Edith Irwin was in the gravest peril. Only a few steps, and he saw the young English lady defending herself heroically against three white-dressed natives, who were evidently about to carry her off. Her light silk dress was torn to shreds in this unequal struggle, and so great was Heideck’s indignation at the monstrous brutality of the assailants that he did not for a moment hesitate to turn his weapon upon the tall, wild-looking fellow, whose brown hands were roughly clutching the bare arms of the young lady.     

       He fired, and with a short, dull cry of pain the fellow reeled to the ground. The other two, horror-stricken, let go their victim. One of them drew his sabre from the sheath and rushed upon the German. Heideck could not fire a second time, being afraid of harming Edith, and so he threw the revolver down, and with a rapid motion, for which his adversary was fully unprepared, caught the arm of the Indian which was raised to strike. Being much more than his match in physical strength, he wrested the sabre with a quick jerk from his grasp. The man, now defenceless, gave up the struggle and like his companion, who had already in silent, cat-like bounds made his escape, hurried off as fast as his legs would carry him.     

       Heideck did not pursue him. His only thoughts were for Edith, and his fears were that she had perhaps received some hurt at the hands of these bandits. In the same moment that the violent hands of the Indians had let her loose, she had fallen down on the carpet, and her marble-pale face looked to Heideck as that of a dead person. Whilst, curiously enough, neither Edith’s screams for help nor the crack of the shot had had the effect of summoning any one of her servants to her aid, now, when the danger was over, all of a sudden a few scared brown faces peered in through the open door; and the peremptory order that Heideck addressed in English to the terrified maid brought her back to her sense of duty to her mistress.     

       With her assistance, Heideck carried the fainting woman to a couch, and perceiving one of the little green flasks of lavender water, which are never wanting in an English house, on the table, he employed the strong perfume as well as he was 

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