A SOLDIER'S DAUGHTER In the centre of the little frontier fort there was a room which one and all of its defenders regarded as sacred.

It was an insignificant chamber, narrow as a prison cell and almost as bare; but it was the safest place in the fort.

In it General Roscoe's daughter--the only white woman in the garrison--had dwelt safely since the beginning of that dreadful siege.
Strictly forbidden by her father to stir from her refuge without his express permission, she had dragged out the long days in close captivity, living in the midst of nerve-shattering tumult but taking no part therein.

She was little more than a child, and accustomed to render implicit obedience to the father she idolised, or she had scarcely been persuaded to submit to this rigorous seclusion.

It would perhaps have been better for her physically and even mentally to have gone out and seen the horrors which were being daily enacted all around her.