CHAPTER XXX. 



SMOKING OUT THE ENEMY. 



" The creeping tide came up along the sand, 

 And o'er and o'er the sand, 

 And round and round the sand, 

 As far as eye could see ; 

 The blinding mist came down and hid the land 

 And never home came she." 



Kinoslit. 



It was evening when Donald Laidlaw, Lou's uncle, effected his 

 escape into the light-house, and the next morning found the two 

 prisoners in the upper floor, vainly seeking to spy out their foes, 

 who had disappeared like the uncouth shapes of a dream. The 

 prisoners had listened and waited all night long, but there was no 

 sound on the air but the low wash of the sea, and nothing could 

 be discerned from the apertures of the tower save the sand and 

 the trailing gleam of the lantern on the ocean. 



Hour by hour glided by in perfect hush. The cormorants flew 

 past to their daily fishery, the gulls came in from sea, and the 

 shore birds ran in and out with the ebbing tide as they were wont 

 to do. Laidlaw emerged out on the upper floor of the light-house, 

 and turned out the lamp, cautiously peering about him. He saw 

 the goods strewn on the sand, just as they had left them, and the 

 half-open door of the cottage still ajar. He descended again to the 

 tower and told what he had seen ; but his escape from the enemy 

 had been so narrow on the previous evening, and Lou's knowledge 

 of Indian character was so good that they concluded it was far 

 from safe to venture out of their place of refuge. So they opened 

 a bag of biscuit and made a frugal meal, from time to time peeping 

 out of the crevices between the plastering and the floor above, and 

 then turning again to each other to talk or dream away the day. 



