Chapter X: The Forest of Gaich--Or the Captain Dhu (4)

Each scarcely knew how deep was the love of the other; for the Scots are not a demonstrative people, and the most powerful emotions of the heart are those which they have been taught, perhaps erroneously, to conceal; but of this negative quality we find less in the more impulsive Celt. The ardour of love had now been succeeded by the affection of marriage, and the sincerity of friendship had replaced the glow of passion; but Roderick's enthusiasm in the estimate of perfect excellence by which he judged his own little wife was only equalled by the standard which she had formed for him. To make her happy was to be himself happy, and it was the study of his life to surround her with such comforts as a camp and barrack or transport afforded upon the pay of a lieutenant of the line in the days of George II. "England," says honest Harry _Coverdale_, "expects every man to do his duty, and occasionally recompenses him for it with honourable starvation." And such was indeed a subaltern's pay in 1757.

In their new mode of existence all seclusion was destroyed; and amid the whirl of a military life, the hurry of embarkation for foreign service, and in the narrow recess allotted to her in the transport, odious by the odour of tar, tobacco, and bilge water, poor Mary sighed for the hum of the summer bee, and for the free, pure breeze that waved the heather bells in Glencoe, or for her husband's once happy home in Glenarrow, roofless and ruined now, as the flames and the devastators of the ducal butcher had left it.

"We have lost all, Mary," said Roderick, bitterly, as one evening she sat on deck, nestled in his plaid, and whispering of these things and of other times; "all but the name of our fathers have gone to the Campbells of Breadalbane, for they have become the lords of all."

"But a time shall come, Roderick, when these usurpations and another still greater shall end, and then the Clan Donald, the MacGregors, the MacIntyres of Glen O, and the race of MacVicar, like the King, shall enjoy their own again."

"Mhari, laoghe mo chri--Mary, calf of my heart," replied the husband, folding her, with a smile, to his breast; "but this will never be----"

"Until the _fatal plaid_ floats down Loch Fyne," she added, with a smile.

There is a Highland prophecy, that a time is coming when a plaid of many colours shall float down Loch Fyne from the Ara to the Firth of Clyde, and then the eagles from a thousand hills shall assemble, and each take therefrom a piece of his own colour; and this is to be the day of general restoration by the Campbells of all of which they have dispossessed the clans of the west.

Under Colonel Francis Grant of Grant (afterwards a lieutenant-general) the regiment landed in America, where the peculiar garb of the Highlanders astonished the Indians, who, during the march to Albany, "flocked from all quarters to see these strangers, who they believed were of the same extraction as themselves, and therefore received as brothers;" for the long hunting-shirt of the Indians resembled the kilt, as their moccassins did the gartered hose, their striped blanket the shoulder plaid, and they too had round shields and knives, like the target and dirk of the Celt; hence, according to General Stewart, "the Indians were delighted to see a European regiment in a costume so similar to their own."

At this period our officers wore a narrow gold braiding round their jackets, but all epaulettes and lace bad been laid aside to render them less conspicuous to the Canadian riflemen. The sergeants laced their coats with silver, and still carried the terrible _tuagh_ or Lochaber axe, the head of which was fitted for hooking, hewing, or spearing an enemy.

After remaining in quarters at Albany for some months, during the winter and spring of 1757, the Black Watch were exercised in bush-fighting and sharpshooting; and amid the dense copsewood or jungle which covered the western margin of the Hudson, on the rugged, stern, and sterile banks of the Mohawk, among woods of stunted pine, dwarf shrubs, and sedge grass, they soon revived the skill they had attained as hardy hunters, deerstalkers, and deadly shots on their native hills; but when they fairly took the field, their ardour and impatience often lured them within the fire of the more wary and cunning Indians who served the Marquis of Montcalm.

So expert, brave, and active did the soldiers of the Black Watch prove themselves in skirmishing, that when, in the beginning of summer, a plan was formed to reduce Louisbourg, and they joined the army destined for that purpose under Major-General Abercrombie, a detachment of fifty chosen men, under the orders of MacGillivray of Glenarrow, departed to reinforce the little garrison in Fort William Henry, on the southern bank of the beautiful Lake George, a sheet of clear water, which is thirty-three miles long and two miles broad, and which, on its northern quarter, near Ticonderoga (that place of fatal memory to the Royal Highlanders), discharges itself into Lake Champlain. It is surrounded by high mountains of the most romantic beauty.

Here, then, lay a garrison of nearly three thousand British soldiers, commanded by Colonel Munro, a veteran Highland officer of great courage and experience, who had for some time successfully protected the frontier of the English colonies, and by his cannon covered the waters of the lake, the double purpose for which the fort had been built. Before the departure of MacGillivray, a serious _malheur_ had occurred near this place.

Munro having heard that the French advanced guard, composed of regulars and Indians, had reached Ticonderoga, sent Colonel John Parker, with four hundred soldiers, down the lake in bay-boats to beat up their quarters; but three of his boat crews being captured, his design became known to M. Beauchatel, the officer in command. Parker was lured into an ambush, and the most dreadful scene of massacre and scalping ensued. His detachment was literally cut to pieces, only two officers and seventy privates escaping, of the four hundred who left the garrison of Munro.

It was on a beautiful evening when MacGillivray's party of Highlanders, marching from the mountains that look down on Lake Champlain, came suddenly in view of Lake George. They had their muskets slung, and were encumbered by their knapsacks, havresacks, canteens, and blankets, and the live-long day had toiled to reach the fort ere night fell; for to halt in that woody district, teeming as it was with the savage Iroquois of Montcalm, would have been a measure fraught with danger and death. MacGillivray came in rear of his little band, leading by the bridle a stout pony, on the pad of which his wife was mounted, for she was ever the object of his tenderest solicitude. This pony was a sturdy little nag, but the long march from Albany had somewhat impaired its vigour, and now it was beginning to fail when almost at the end of the journey.

With the detachment of MacGillivray were two of his comrades in the late civil war, Alaster MacGregor, from Glengyle, and Ewen Chisholm, one of the faithful men of Glenmorriston, who guarded the Prince in the Coire-gaoth.

The sun was setting, and his gorgeous disc seemed for a time to linger among clouds of saffron, crimson, and purple, that were piled in glowing masses above the wooded hills, some of which were a thousand feet in height, and surrounded the waters and islets of Lake George--named by the Indians of old the Horican, and by the Pilgrim Fathers the Lake of the Sacrament; for, charmed by the limpid purity of the water and the sylvan beauty of the scenery, it had been selected, especially by the Jesuits, as a place for procuring the element of baptism. But now for the old Indian name had been substituted that of his Majesty George II.; while, to awe the Mohawks, the Oneidas, the Tuscaroras, and to keep the French in check, Fort William Henry--named after another prince of the House of Brunswick--had been built, as related, upon the southern margin of the lake.

Like all American forts, it was formed with earthen ramparts, covered by rich green turf, and defended by tall stockades of dry white timber. Within were seen the shingle-covered roofs of the low barrack buildings, tarred and painted black, and all glistening in the sunshine. Two of the lower bastions were faced with stone and washed by the azure water of Lake George, while a deep fosse secured the fort on the landward, and dangerous morasses protected its flanks. Beyond lay a cleared space, where the timber of the old primeval forest had been cut down for garrison purposes. The bayonets of the sentinels flashed like stars on the green ramparts ever and anon, while some thirty or forty lines of steady horizontal light marked where the setting sun shone on the iron guns that peered through the embrasures, or frowned _en barbette_ above the slope of the parapets.

The gaudy Union Jack hung unwaved upon its staff. As evening closed in, masses of vapour ascended from the bosom of the deep blue water, and wreathed like white and golden scarfs about the summits of the mountains, whose tops were mellowed in the distance, and those rocky bluffs that start forward from the wooded slopes, as if to break the harmony of the scenery by a few darker and bolder features. As the last vestige of the sun sank, and its rays alone remained to play upon the clouds above and the ripples of the Horican below, the boom of the evening gun was heard pealing through the wilderness with a hundred solemn reverberations; and as the flag descended from its staff on the fort, a sound on the soft and ambient air came floating up the mountainside.

"The drummers are beating the evening _retreat_, Mary," said MacGillivray to his wife, who was looking pale and weary; "in half-an-hour we shall be with old Munro."

"Yonder fort is like some place I have seen before," said she, pressing her husband's hand.

"Aye, Lady Glenarrow," responded Ewen Chisholm, coming close with the easy familiarity of a Highlander--a familiarity that is destitute of all assurance; "you are thinking of Fort George, for there are the same palisades and the same fashion of ramparts washed by the waves of the Moray Firth; but oich! oich! we miss green Ard-na-saor."

"And the Black Isle, and the Chanonry-ness, Ewen," added MacGillivray.

"Yes, yes," said Mary, thoughtfully, to the soldiers in their own language; "the land is beautiful; but it is not _home_. Then what is it to us?"

"Yet," said Ewen, "here is a badge for your bonnet, MacGillivray, and, though of American growth, you cannot despise it."

"Thanks, Ewen," said the officer, with a kindling eye, as he placed the gift in his bonnet.

It was a sprig of the red whortleberry, the badge of those of his name in Scotland, where they are styled the _Clann Gillibhreac_, "or the Sons of the Freckled Man."

The elm, the ash, the cypress, the chesnut, the pine, and the beech, all mingled their varied foliage above the narrow track or Indian trail the soldiers were pursuing, while a thousand flowers and shrubs, to them unknown, flourished in all the rich luxuriance of this new world into which they were penetrating, and the musk-rat, the racoon, and the fox scampered before them from tree to tree as they proceeded.

"Hark!" exclaimed Alaster MacGregor, a wary old forester, "something on two feet stirs in the bush!"

"Dioul! and see, Alaster, the objects are close enough," added the officer.

At a part of the wood where it became more open by the trees having been cut away, and where the ground shelved abruptly down to the depth of eighty or a hundred feet, they suddenly came in view of two Indians gliding stealthily from stem to stem, as if seeking to elude observation. Their wild and horrid aspect caused the timid wife of MacGillivray to utter a faint cry of terror, while the whole detachment halted simultaneously to observe them, and began instinctively to handle their muskets.

"They are Iroquois," whispered MacGillivray to his sergeant; "I was told that Montcalm had filled all the woods around Lake George with the cursed tribes of that race."

"One of them is carrying something," replied the sergeant, as he shred away by his Lochaber axe a magnificent azalea, the flowers and foliage of which obscured his view.

"It is a child--a poor little child," exclaimed Mary, piteously. "Listen to its cry of despair!"

"The child of a white man, by Heaven!" added MacGillivray. "Come hither you that are the best shots, and bring yonder rascals down; but fire one it a time, lest we needlessly alarm the fort, or, what is worse, bring all the tribes of the Iroquois upon us."

Both these savages were nearly nude. Their skins had the deep and tawny red of their race, but were streaked with war paint. One was daubed over red and blue, and the other who bore the child was striped with white lines, and these glaring upon a background so sombre, gave him the horrible aspect of a walking skeleton. Their heads were closely shaved, or by some other process divested of all hair, save the scalp-lock, in which was tied a tuft of eagles' feathers. Each had the terrible tomahawk and scalping-knife glittering at his gay wampum girdle, and each bore a French musket ornamented with brass rings. One wore over his shoulder the fur of a wild animal; the other had nothing across his bare, brawny chest but the buff belt of a cartridge-box. By their weapons they were at once known to be allies of the Marquis de Montcalm, who with a policy, alike dangerous and ungenerous, had armed the six nations of the Iroquois against the British.

On finding themselves perceived, the savages uttered a wild laugh of derision, and the skeleton--he who bore the child, a poor little boy of some three or four years--waved him thrice round his head, as if with the intention of dashing out his brains against a tree; then, suddenly seeming to change his mind, he deliberately deposited him on the ground, and grasping a handful of the boy's golden hair in his brown fingers, drew his scalping-knife from the tail-piece of a musk-rat, the skin of which formed his hunting-pouch: but now a wild cry of entreaty from Mary MacGillivray made him pause.

"Ewen Chisholm--Alaster, shoot--shoot, at all hazards!" exclaimed her husband.

Ewen knelt down, took a deliberate aim, and then paused, for the Iroquois was also on his knees, and had artfully interposed the child between his person and the soldiers.

"Fire, Ewen, I command you; fire at all hazards!" reiterated MacGillivray, impetuously; "'tis better for the poor child to die by a bullet than by an Indian's knife--a poisoned one, perhaps."

The Iroquois raised his arm for the purpose of giving the knife one vigorous sweep round the scalp of the child, who was frozen with fear; but at that moment Ewen fired. The ball pierced the red skin near the shoulder; with a yell of rage he dropped his weapon, and plunging into the woods disappeared. A shot from the musket of Alaster MacGregor brought down his companion, who though one of his legs was broken, endeavoured to crawl away, but was overtaken by the soldiers, and roughly dragged up the slope to the forest path. The rescued child clung to his preservers, and to the neck of Mary MacGillivray, who placed him on her saddle-bow, and with that motherly tenderness and those caresses which come so naturally from a kind and amiable woman, endeavoured to calm the terrors his late adventure had excited.

With a sudden glare of defiance, the wounded Iroquois surveyed those captors at whose hands he expected immediate immolation.

Several bayonets were directed against him, and more than one musket was clubbed butt-end uppermost to close his career, when Mary interposed and begged that his life might be spared, on which the Highlanders drew back. The glittering eyes of the Iroquois were fixed upon her, and though he knew not the language in which she spoke, he was aware that to her intercession he owed his life, and smiled; for, Indian like, he despised the manhood of men who could be swayed by a woman. Thus he evinced neither surprise nor gratitude, nor even pain, though his wounded limb bled freely, and must have occasioned him exquisite torment. By Mary's desire the limb was bound up, and in a few minutes the astonished savage found himself placed across four muskets, and borne towards the fort, which was now little more than a quarter of a mile distant. From time to time he glanced keenly and sharply into the adjacent thickets, as if expecting a rescue, but none appeared; and on finding himself clear of the forest he doubtless gave himself up for lost.

"We are close to the gates," said MacGillivray to the piper; "play up, Alisdair Bane."

"Bodoich n' m briogois?" suggested the piper, assuming his drones.

The officer assented, and soon the far-stretching dingles of American forest were ringing to the stirring notes of Lord Breadalbane's march, while the tones of the instrument seemed to astonish and excite the terror of the Indian, in front of whom the piper was strutting with that lofty port peculiar to his profession. Considering this to be probably a prelude to his being scalped and slain, the Iroquois smiled disdainfully, remembered that he was a warrior, and relapsed into his previous state of apathetic indifference, resolved that in the death of torment for which he doubted not he was reserved, to perish with the phlegmatic coolness and iron resolution of his race.

These Iroquois were a confederation of tribes, who supported each other in battle in a manner not unlike the sixteen confederated clans known in Scotland as the Clan Chattan. The chief of the Iroquois were the Mohawks, who resided on the Mohawk River and the banks of those lakes which still bear their name, and from thence they extended their conquests beyond the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence, subduing the Eries, the Hurons, the Ottawas and five other tribes, till they became the terror of their enemies by their ferocity and valour; but even these were forced to yield at last to British rule.*

* In the Army List of the 15th September, 1816, will be found among _officers_ having the local rank of _Major_ in Canada, "John Norton, _alias_ Teyoninhakawaren, Captain and leader of the Indians of the Five Nations."

The report of the musket-shots had reached the fort, where the mainguard and a strong inlying piquet were under arms when the Highlanders marched in. They were received by their countryman Colonel Munro, who, to his astonishment and joy, discovered in the little fellow who nestled in the arms of the mounted lady, his own son and only child Eachin (or Hector), who had been abstracted--but how, none could tell--from the gate of the fort by some of the lurking Indians.

The colonel was a brave and veteran officer, who had recently been deprived, by death, of a young wife. She had left him this little boy, and the heart of the soldier was filled with lively gratitude for the rescue of one whom he prized more than life. After pouring out his thanks to MacGillivray, he turned sternly towards the Iroquois. A sudden glow of anger for the narrow escape of the child made him unsheath his sword, with the intention of passing it through the heart of the Indian, to destroy him, as one might slay a reptile or wild animal; but again Mary interposed, saying,--

"For my sake, spare him, Colonel Munro."

"I cannot refuse you anything, madam," replied the old soldier, courteously, lowering the point of his sword; "and I would that you had something of greater value to ask of me than the life of a wretched Iroquois; but it shall be spared--ay, and his wound shall be dressed, if such is your wish."

"Thanks, dear colonel."

"But, bear in mind, madam," continued Munro, pressing his little boy close to his breast, "that were the case reversed and we at the mercy of the Iroquois, even as this tawny villain is at ours, we should be stripped, bound to trees, and put to death by such torments as devils alone could devise. And now, MacGillivray, though doubtless weary with your long march, ere you refresh, tell me (for here amid the wilds of the Horican, we hear nothing but the whoop of the wild Iroquois, the yells of the Mohawks, and, now and then, a rattle of musketry) what news of the war?"

"The Earl of London has marched to besiege Louisbourg!"

"And delayed his attack upon Crown Point?"

"Yes."

"I expected so much. Since the capture of Oswego, the French have remained masters of the lakes, and collecting the Indians, force or lure them, like the Iroquois, to serve King Louis, and thus all our settlements on the Mohawk River and the German Flats have been destroyed and the land laid as waste and desolate as--"

"The Braes of Lochaber after Culloden," said MacGillivray, with a louring eye.

"While here with red coats on us, let us think no more of Culloden," replied Munro in a low voice. "But what news of Montcalm? Our scouts assert he is moving up this way to besiege me."

"At Abercrombie's head-quarters, all say that, elated by recent advantages, Louis de St. Veran, and his second in command, the Baron de Beauchatel, are desirous of attempting something great."

"And that something--"

"Will be the destruction of Fort William Henry, as it covers the frontiers and commands Lake George."

"But does the commander-in-chief expect that I, with only three thousand regulars, will be able to withstand the whole French army?" asked Munro, with a stern and anxious whisper.

"No--General Webb--"

"Old Dan Webb of the 48th?"

"With a column of infantry, was to leave headquarters a day or two after us to succour you, and Fort Edward is to be the base of his operations. Meanwhile, I with my fifty Highland marksmen, pushed on as a species of avant-garde."

"Then both Webb and Montcalm are _en route_ for this locality?"

"'Tis a race, and he who wins may win Fort William Henry."

"In three days a great game shall have been played here, perhaps," said Munro, thoughtfully; "but to God and our own valour we must commit the event; and now, madam, a hundred pardons for leaving you here so long," he added, bowing to Mary, and with that old air of Scoto-French gallantry which Scott has so well portrayed in his "Baron of Bradwardine," he drew the glove from his right hand, and raised his little triangular hat; "permit me to lead you to my quarters until your own are prepared, and wo shall have a cheerful evening's chat about poor old Scotland, and the homes we may never see again. When I first heard the sound of your pipe rising up from the dingles of yonder forest, and saw the tartans waving as your Highlanders marched up the gate, I cannot describe the emotions that filled my heart. The thoughts of home and other times came thronging thick and fast upon my memory--kinsmen and friends, father, mother, and wife--voices and faces of years long passed away, of the loved, the lost, and the dead, were there with the memory of _all_ that the voice of the war-pipe rouses in the heart of an exiled Scotsman; but enough of this! And now, to you, madam, and to you, MacGillivray, as we say in the land of hills and eagles, a hundred thousand welcomes to Fort William Henry!"

The wounded Iroquois was consigned to the temporary hospital of the fort; the newly arrived Highlanders were "told off" (as the phrase is) to their quarters, and in one hour after, when the last roll of the drum at the tattoo had died away, and when the rising moon shone over the wooded mountains on the clear glassy water and green islets of Lake George, all was still in Fort William Henry, and nothing seemed moving but the bayonets flashing back the rays of silver on their tips, as the muffled sentinels trod to and fro upon the palisadoed ramparts.

The fatigue of her journey northwards from Albany to Lake George had proved too much for the delicate wife of MacGillivray, as at this time she was on the eve of adding a little stranger to the number of the garrison, and thus the solicitude of her husband for her health and safety, in a crowded fort, prepared for a desperate siege, and situated in a wild district, now swarming with hostile Indians, became at times alike deep and painful. The issue of the coming strife, none could foretell, and Roderick knew that if aught fatal happened to him, Mary and her babe--the babe he might not be spared to see--would be alone, in this far world of the west, exposed to penury, to perils and horrors, which his mind could neither contemplate nor conceive.

The first and second day after their arrival passed without any alarm.

On the third, Mary visited the wounded Indian, and gave him some little comforts prepared by her own hands. His limb had been simply fractured, and the wound, which was not so severe as had been at first supposed, was now healing rapidly. He received her with a bright smile of recognition--perhaps of gratitude, for he remembered that she had twice saved his life--first from the bayonets of the Highlanders, and secondly from the sword of Colonel Munro. His features were rather regular and handsome, and save for their deep tawny tint and strong lines, not unlike those of many Europeans. He received her presents, and then relapsed into moody and sullen silence; but Mary, whose tender nature felt pity for the poor Indian who was deemed and treated little better than a dog by those around him, had learned some of the native language from an old Ottawa woman who had acted as her servant in Albany; and now she made an effort to address the savage in that singular mixture of Canadian-French, English, and Indian, which formed the usual medium of communication with the natives. She asked his name.

"Orono," he replied in a husky voice, while his eyes brightened, and a red deeper even than the warpaint and the glass beads he wore, spread under his tawny skin.

"And he who accompanied you?"

"Ossong, a Mohawk warrior, and a brave one! Before the door of his wigwam a hundred scalps of the Yengees are drying in the wind."

Mary uttered a faint exclamation of horror, but the savage smiled, and said--

"Are no men ever killed in your country?"

"And what meant you to do with the child?"

The stealthy and cunning eyes of Orono lowered for a moment; then, as a gleam of unutterable ferocity spread over his striped visage, he answered--

"To have kept him till we could get the grey scalp of the white chief his father."

"And then----"

"We would have given him to an old pawaw, as a son, to replace one slain by the white chief two moons ago; but I will pardon him all wrong for the sake of you, the pale-face who have been so kind to me."

As he said this the Indian took the tiny white hand of Mary in his strong brown muscular fingers, and attempted to place it on his bare head near the scalp-lock, in token of amity and future service; but she shrank bock in terror and with a repugnance which she could not repress, and once more the malevolent gleam which always filled her with dread, shone in the glittering eyes of the Red Indian.

"Have you a wife, Orono?" she asked, to conciliate him.

"Orono _had_ a wife," replied the Indian, sadly; "a girl of the Oneidas, and he had two little children for whom she boiled the rice and maize, and wove bright belts of wampum. Orono had a mother too, who shared his wigwam by the sunny bank of the Horican; but three moons ago the red warriors came, his wigwam was burned, his cattle taken, the trees were cut down, and the mother, the squaw, and the children of Orono were all destroyed, as we would destroy the big snakes in the reeds or the otter in the swamps. And they slew his father--an aged warrior, a man of many moons, and many, many days, who remembered when first the great fire-spouting canoes of the Yengees, with their huge white sails, came over the salt lake from beyond the rising sun; but they slew him also--all, all! Father, mother, squaw, and papoose--cattle and dog; nothing was left but a little heap of cinders to mark where the wigwam stood: all were gone, like the flowers of last summer--gone to the happy hunting grounds of the Iroquois," he added, pointing westward.

"And poor Orono is left quite alone!" said Mary, patting his shoulder kindly, for the story of the Indian impressed her by its resemblance to the fate of her own family in Glencoe, and to many an episode of murder and outrage after Culloden; "alone," she added, "in this great selfish world!"

"To revenge them; and for this I have trod on the pipe of peace and dug up the war-hatchet!" he replied in a voice like the hiss of a snake, while his eyes glared like two red carbuncles in the dusk of the evening, as Mary retired in dismay.

Ere the night was finally set in her tender sympathies for her new friend received a severe shock. To her husband, who had just returned from a reconnoitring expedition, she was relating her interview with Orono, when the sharp report of two muskets echoed among the logwood edifices which formed the barracks of the fort. Mary grew deadly pale, and clung to Roderick.

"The French!" was his first thought, as he broke away, snatched his claymore, and hurried to the barrack-square, where he heard that a soldier of the Royal American Regiment had been assassinated.

Orono the Indian had abstracted a knife from the basket of his late unsuspecting visitor, and springing unseen upon the sentinel at the hospital door had slain him, swept the blade once round his head above the cars, and torn away his scalp. Then though weak and wounded, with his knife in one hand, and the ghastly trophy reeking in the other, he had bounded over the palisades like an evil spirit, glided through the wet ditch like an eel, and, escaping the musket-shots of two sentinels on the summit of the glacis, reached the darkening forest, where all trace of him was instantly lost in the thickness of the foliage and the gloom of a moonless evening.

"And so, dear Mary, with this terrible episode closes your little romance," said MacGillivray, with a kind smile, as he put an arm round her.

"I devoutly hope so," said she, shuddering, and feeling, she knew not why, a horrible impression that she would yet see more of this Indian, whose lithe but herculean form, sternly sombre face, glittering eyes, and scalp-lock were ever before her.

"The black traitor, to reward our kindness thus! 'Tis a thousand pities, dearest, you saved him from our men on the march, and from old Munro's sword in the fort; for these wretches are no better than wild beasts. Thus it matters little whether wo kill them now or a month hence."

"Oh, Roderick!" exclaimed Mary, with her hazel eyes full of tears; "how can you talk thus?"

"Why?"

"For so said King William's warrant to massacre my people in Glencoe; and so said that order which was written on the night before Culloden."

"True, true; the poor Indian only fights for the land God gave his fathers, even as ours, Mary, was given to the children of the Gael," replied Roderick, as the usual current of his bitter thoughts returned; "and a time there was Mary (God keep thee from harm!) when I little thought to find myself so far from my father's grave, wearing the black cockade of the Hanoverian in my bonnet, and the red uniform of those men who trampled on the white rose at Culloden, and murdered the aged men, the women, and the little ones of your race, under cloud of night, at the behest of a bloodthirsty Dutchman!"

"Still speaking of Glencoe and Culloden!" said Colonel Munro, joining them, as they sat on the bastion, at the base of which rippled the waters of Lake George, then flushed red with the last light of sunset.

"Yes, Munro; I am thinking of the time when the kilt alone was seen upon the Highland mountains, and when the breeches of the Lowlander--the _brat-galla_ (_i.e._ foreigner's rag)--were unknown among us."

"Let us have no more of these sour memories, and if my fair friend will favour me with that song which she sang to my little boy last evening, it may lighten the tedium of a time which to me, after being caged up here for six months, seems insufferably weary."

Mary coloured, and glanced round timidly, for several officers of the garrison who had been lounging on the parapets drew near, and she knew few songs save those of her native hills, and consequently they were in a language totally unintelligible to the gentlemen of the Royal Americans and Parker's Foot; but on being pressed by the colonel and his little one, who nestled at her feet, she sang the only English song with which she was acquainted. It was a paraphrase of one of the psalms,* and was then a favourite with the Jacobites, who sang it to a beautiful and plaintive old Highland air.

* Psalm cxxxvii.

On Gallia's shore we sat and wept,
When Scotland we thought on.
Robbed of her bravest sons, and all
Her ancient spirit gone!

"Revenge!" the sons of Gallia said,
"Revenge your wasted land;
Already your insulting foes
Crowd the Batavian strand!

"How shall the sons of Freedom e'er
For foreign conquest fight?
For power how wield the sword, deprived
Of liberty and right?

"If thee, O Scotland! we forget,
Even to our latest breath,
May foul dishonour stain our name,
And bring a coward's death.

"May sad remorse for fancied guilt
Our future days employ,
If all thy sacred rights are not
Above our ohiefest joy.

"And thou, proud Gaul, O faithless friend,
Thy ruin is not far;
May God, on thy devoted head,
Pour all the woes of war!

"When thou, thy slaughtered little ones,
And outraged dames shalt see;
Such help, such pity mayest thou have,
As Scotland had from thee!"

* * * *

As Mary sang, many loiterers of the Black Watch had joined the little group around her, and listened as if turned to stone. The veteran colonel of the Royal Americans, who had been long, long from the land of his birth, felt his grave iron nature melted. He sat on the parapet of the gun-battery, with his chin placed in his right hand, and his left nervously grasping the hilt of his sword. His keen grey eyes, which roved uneasily from one object to another, began at last to moisten and fill, and then tears ran down the furrows of his cheeks--old dry channels worn by war and time, but all unused to such visitors.

The _air_ rather than the words moved MacGillivray and his soldiers who listened. Their heads were bowed and their eyes were sad, for their hearts and souls, their memory and their love, were far away--away to the land where, at that hour, the silver moon was casting the shadows of the heath-clad mountains on the grassy glens below; away to the Braes of Lochaber, the shores of Lochiel, and the deep blue lochs that form a chain of watery links in the great glen of Caledonia; away to the land of the clans, the soil from whence their fathers sprang, and where their graves lay under the old sepulchral yew, or by the Druid clachan of ages past and gone; away from the lone woods and mighty wilds of that Far West, which in the next century was to become the home of their children, where the expatriated men of Sutherland, Barra, and Breadalbane were to find a refuge from the avaricious dukes, the canting marquises, and grinding factors of the Western Highlands, and from their infamous system of modern oppression, tyranny, and misrule, which has decreed that the poor have no right to the soil of their native country.

All were hushed and still in the group as the Highland girl sang--for, though a wedded wife, and on the eve of being a mother, Mary was but a girl yet--when hark! the report of a musket on the outer bastion broke the stillness of the evening hour, and an officer of the mainguard rushed, sword in hand, towards the startled listeners.

"Munro,", he exclaimed; "Colonel Munro--a column of French are in sight, and already within range of cannon-shot."

"So close, Captain Dacres?"

"And in great strength," added the officer.

"And the Indians--those diabolical Iroquois?"

"Fill the woods on every side--they are already at the foot of the glacis. Hark!" continued Captain Dacres, as a contused volley was heard, "the mainguard are opening a fire on their advanced files."

The colonel kissed his child, and with an impressive glance consigned it to the care of Mary.

"Fall in, Sixtieth!" he exclaimed, rushing into the barracks, where the alarm was now general. "MacGillivray, get your lads of the Black Watch under arms, and let them pick me off those brown devils as fast as they can load and fire again. Gentlemen, to your companies; we shall have grim work to do before another sun sets on the waters of the Horican."

In ten minutes the troops in the little garrison were all under arms, for the men came rushing, cross-belted, to their colours, while the log huts echoed again and again to the long roll of the alarm drum--that peculiar roll, which, when heard in camp or garrison, makes the blood of all quicken, as it is the well-known warning "to arms;" and now the pipes of Alisdair Bane (a pupil of Munich Dhu, or Black Murdoch MacInnon, the old piper of Glenarrow) lent their pibroch to swell the warlike din, while the troops loaded, and fresh casks of ball-cartridge were staved and distributed by the sergeants in rear of each company.

The artillerymen stood by their guns, with rammer, sponge, and lighted matches; the battalions of the Royal Americans and of the unfortunate Colonel Parker, a corps of Provincials, and the fifty Celts of the Black Watch, soon manned the ramparts, from whence, in the dim twilight of eve, the white uniforms of the regiments of Bearn, Guienne, and Languedoc, who formed the flower of Montcalm's army, and the bronze-like figures of the gliding Iroquois, who formed the scourge of ours, were seen at times between the green masses of foliage that fringed the calm, deep waters of Lake George, which lay motionless as a vast mirror of polished steel.

"Away to the bomb-proofs, Mary; this is no scene for you," said MacGillivray, giving his weeping and terrified wife a tender embrace; "the vaults are your only place of safety. Would to God," he added, giving her a farewell kiss, "that you were safe at home, laoighe mo chri, even with the humblest of our cottars in Glenarrow. The thought of you alone causes my heart to fail, and makes a coward of me, Mary. Alaster MacGregor, conduct her to the bomb-proofs, and join us again."

The soldier led her to the vaults in which the whole of the women and children of the garrison were enclosed for safety from shot and shell, and where they nestled together in fear and trembling, preparing lint and bandages for the wounded; and scarcely had Alaster rejoined his commander, when a red flash and a stream of white smoke came from the darkening wood, and the first cannon of the French sent a sixteen-pound shot crashing through the log barracks and slew a captain of the Royal Americans.

Then a hearty hurrah of defiance rose from the garrison of Munro, and the fiendish yells and warwhooping of the Iroquois were heard in the echoing woods.

MacGillivray envied the lightness of heart possessed at this crisis by his unmarried comrades, who had neither wife nor child to excite their anxiety, compassion, or fear--men who, careless and soldier like, seemed to live for the present, without regret for the past or dread of the future; but such is the life of a soldier, while as we have it in "Don Juan"--

"Nought so bothers
The hearts of the heroic in a charge,
As leaving a small family at large."

At the head of all the forces he could collect, ten thousand regular infantry of France, and hordes of the wild Iroquois, Louis de St. Veran, Marquis of Montcalm, and his second in command, the Baron de Beauchatel, Chevalier of St. Louis, now invested Fort William Henry, and pushed the siege with a vigour that was all the greater because General Webb, with four thousand British troops, was posted at some distance, for the purpose of protecting Munro's garrison, a duty about which he did not give himself the smallest concern whatever.

Before daybreak next morning, the French artillery opened heavily on the turf ramparts, the wooden palisades and log huts of the fort; while a fire of musketry was maintained upon it from every available point, and the Indian marksmen, from behind every tree, rock, and bush, or tuft of sedge-grass that afforded an opportunity for concealing their dingy forms, shot with deadly precision at the officers, and all who in any way exposed or signalized themselves. Munro and his soldiers fought with ardour, and defended themselves with confidence, never doubting that General Webb would soon advance to their support, and by a brisk attack in the rear, compel the marquis to abandon the siege. From their gun-batteries and stockades, they maintained an unceasing fire, and thus the slaughter on both sides became desperate and severe.

In the gloomy vault to which the humanity and prudence of Colonel Munro had consigned the women and children of his garrison, the timid wife of MacGillivray could hear the roar of musketry, with the incessant booming of the heavy artillery on every side, and ever and anon the hiss or crash of the exploding shells. These and other dreadful sounds paralysed her; for she had but one thought--the safety of her husband; and appalled by the united horrors of the siege, she almost forgot to pray, and sat with her arms round the child of Munro, pale, sad, and silent--awed and bewildered.

Meanwhile Roderick, with his party of the Black Watch, proved invaluable to Munro. As the dispatch of the latter has it, "Being all expert marksmen and deadly shots, they manned a line of loopholed stockades, which faced a wood full of the Iroquois, of whom they slew an incredible number; for if the foot or hand, or even the scalp lock of a warrior became visible for a moment to these quicksighted deer-stalkers from the Highland hills, it revealed where the rest of his body could be covered by their levelled barrels; thus there were soon more dead than living warriors in the bush where the braves of the Five Nations had posted themselves, and the yells and screams of rage uttered by the survivors in their anticipations of vengeance, were like nothing one could imagine but the cries of the damned."

Among the savages who swarmed thick as bees upon the skirts of the forest, MacGillivray repeatedly recognised the ghastly warrior Ossong, who was painted over with white stripes; and his comrade Orono, who had so recently made an escape from the fort, and who was conspicuous alike by his bravery and the tuft of eagle's feathers in his scalp-lock.

MacGillivray relinquished his claymore for a musket, and, as Munro said, "Knocked over more Red Indians in an hour, than he could have done red deer in a week, at home."

On the second day, just as the firing was about to re-commence, a French officer, bearing a flag of truce, and accompanied by a drummer beating a parley, appeared before the gates, and was received by MacGillivray, who conducted him, blindfolded by a handkerchief, to the presence of Munro. He was a tall and handsome man, about forty years of age, and wore the white uniform of the Grenadiers of Guienne, with the order of St. Louis, and had a white flowing peruke, _à la Louis XV_.

"Your name, monsieur?" said Munro, bowing low.

"The Sieur Fontbrune, Baron of Beauchatel," replied he, bowing to the diamond buckles at his knees, and then presenting his box of rappee.

"Indeed--the second in command to the Marquis of Montcalm!"

"The same, and Colonel of the Regiment of Guienne."

"We are greatly honoured."

"Nay," responded the courteous French noble, "the honour is mine in having the privilege of conferring with an officer of such valour as M. le Colonel Munro."

"And your purpose?" asked the latter, drily.

"The delivery of this letter,"

In presence of the senior officers of his garrison, Munro opened and read this communication from the French marquis, in which the latter wrote, that he deemed himself obliged by the common dictates of humanity to request that M. le Colonel Munro would surrender the fort, and cease, by a futile resistance, to provoke the savage Iroquois, who accompanied the French army in such vast and unmanageable hordes.

"A detachment of your garrison, under Colonel Parker, has lately (he continued) experienced their cruelty. I have it yet in my power to restrain and oblige them to observe a capitulation, as comparatively few of them have been hitherto killed. Your persisting in the defence of your fort can only retard its fate a few days, and must of necessity expose an unfortunate garrison, who cannot possibly receive relief, when we consider the _precautions_ taken to prevent it. I demand a decisive answer; and for this purpose have sent the Sieur de Fontbrune, one of my staff. You may implicitly credit all that he tells you.

"MONTCALM."

"I will never surrender while we have a shot left," exclaimed Munro, furiously. "What say you, gentlemen?"

"That we and our soldiers will stand by you, Colonel, to the last gasp!" replied Captain Dacres.

"This, then, is your decision, messieurs?" said M. Beauchatel, playing with the ringlets of his peruke.

"It is--it is," was the answer on all hands.

"A most unwise one, permit me to say," urged the baron.

"To yield when General Webb is within less than one day's march of us, would be a treason to the King and a disgrace to ourselves."

The French baron smiled with provoking coolness, and said,

"General Webb beholds our preparations and approaches with an apparent indifference that originates either in infamous cowardice or miserable infatuation. In short, M. le Colonel, he has abandoned you."

"M. le Baron," replied Munro, with some heat, "General Webb is a British officer, and I have no doubt will fully maintain his reputation. If he has not already advanced to raise the siege, he must deem it better for the King's service to remain in position where he is; but, ere long, you will hear his cannon opening on your rear."

"Pardieu, you delude yourself."

"I do not, M. le Baron, and you may inform the Marquis de Montcalm, that he had better have continued to amuse himself with mounting guard at Versailles and Marli, than by beating up our quarters here on the Canadian lakes."

"Oh, he and I have mounted guard at Mons and Tournay, at Lisle and Fontenoy, Colonel, where men don't play at soldiers, as here in America," replied the Frenchman, smiling; "but adieu, mon ami--adieu."

"Farewell--MacGillivray, conduct M. le Baron beyond the gates."

So ended this parley, and in less than five minutes the din of cannon and musketry, with the warwhoop of the Indians, again rang along the echoing shores of the Horican, and once more the white smoke shrouded alike the defences and defenders of Fort William Henry.

The Baron de Beauchatel led the Regiment of Guienne close up to the stockades, which were lined by the fifty Highlanders of the Black Watch, and though exposed to a withering fire, he bravely and furiously strove to destroy the barrier by axes and sledge hammers. MacGillivray thrice covered the Baron with his deadly aim; but, inspired by some mysterious emotion, the origin of which at that time he could not fathom, he spared him and levelled his weapon at others. Filled with rage by the resistance they experienced, the soldiers of the Regiment of Guienne encouraged each other by shouts of

"Vive le Roi! Tue--tue les sauvages d'Ecosse! à la baionette! à la baionette!"

They soon fell into confusion; but the brave Beauchatel continued to brandish his sword and shout the _mot de ralliement_ of his corps, for it was then usual in the French service to have a war-cry or regimental rallying-word.

"Notre Dame! Notre Dame de frappemort!" (Our holy Lady, who strikes home!) he was heard crying again and again; for the Virgin was the patroness of the Grenadiers of Guienne; but neither the spell of her name nor the fiery spirit of Beauchatel enabled the soldiers to withstand the fire of the Highlanders, whose position was impregnable; and on Captain Dacres' company of the 60th opening a flank fusilade upon them, they were swept back into the forest, leaving a mound of white-coated killed and wounded before the stockades they had so valiantly attempted to destroy.

Alaster MacGregor received a wound from a French soldier, who, on finding himself dying, crawled on his hands and knees close up to the stockade, and, with the last effort of expiring nature, fired his musket through a loophole and fell back dead.

"A brave fellow!" exclaimed MacGillivray.

"Yes," added Alaster, as the blood dripped from his left cheek: "but I wish he had departed this life five minutes sooner."

A third and fourth day of conflict passed away, and the loss by killed and wounded became severe in Fort William Henry; five hundred dead men were already lying within the narrow compass of its batteries; but still there was no sign of Webb's brigade advancing to the rescue. Munro began to have serious doubts of the issue, with secret regrets that he had not accepted the first offers of the Marquis de Montcalm, for the blood of the Iroquois was now at boiling heat, in their longing to revenge the fall of so many of their braves, who, notwithstanding all their caution and cunning, had perished under the deadly aim of the Highland marksmen, and lay in dusky piles among the long wavy sedge grass and luxuriant foliage of the forest; but though he confined these thoughts to his own breast, his garrison began to have the same misgivings.

One day, telescope in hand, he was eagerly sweeping the distant landscape in the direction where it was known that General Webb was posted, when Dacres, of his own regiment, approached him. Not a bayonet or musket-barrel were seen to glitter, or a standard to wave in the hazy distance in token of coming aid, and he sharply closed the glass with a sigh and turned away; so Dacres addressed him.

"When smoking a pipe in the bomb-proofs this morning--by the bye, my dear colonel, I am always thoughtful during that operation--it occurred to me that General Webb----"

"Well, sir--well," said Munro, irritably.

"Remains very long in position without advancing to our relief."

"I am too well aware of that, sir."

"But what does such conduct mean?"

"God and himself alone know," replied Munro, while his keen grey eye flashed with passion; "he would seem to be in league with the enemy against us; ay, in league with Montcalm, and the words of Beauchatel seemed to infer some previous knowledge of his intentions, and hence perhaps the friendly warning about the Indians; but we have cast the die with them. If in the course of one day more Webb comes not to our aid----"

"By Heaven, I will pistol him with my own hand; that is, if I survive this affair!" exclaimed MacGillivray, who joined them.

"Nay, sir," replied the colonel, "I shall claim that task, if task it be; but hark! there is a salvo."