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 could atone, only one way in which he could save his people from the calamity which he had all but brought upon them. And with that long score to settle he was glad that there was only one way.

For many minutes he did not move. He lay on his back, his eyes open now, listening to Gilyan's slow, heavy breathing, planning carefully the thing that he was about to do. At last his hand groped along the rocky surface to his left and closed upon the long knife which he had placed within easy reach beside his bow and his spear.

There would be no outcry. The King's Commissioner would awake at dawn to find a dead man lying at the entrance of the cave; and by that time the Raven would be far on his way towards the unknown wilderness beyond the headwaters of Ocona Lufta, where no white man had ever trod.

Still lying on his back, he turned his head very slowly to the right.

For some moments he was not sure of what he saw. The fire had died away to nothing. Overhead a few stars glittered. A half moon shone feebly through a thin veil of cloud. In the faint light even the Indian warrior's trained vision failed to discern the outline of the puma's form. Yet something about the shape of the stout chestnut oak limb slanting above the wide ledge in front of the