But Yseulte herself was the last to second these well-meant efforts. She would brace herself up to appear cheerful and at ease, but seemed never so happy as when alone, rambling for hours through the fields and woods, to her parents' concern and alarm. But any expression of the latter would be met by a wan smile and a remark that one who had heard the war-whoop and shots fired in grim earnest, and had twice been chased by red Indians on the war-path, felt pretty secure among the peaceful lanes and meadows of tame Old England. And one other thing noteworthy was that she avoided Lant Hall and its denizens with a horror and a persistency that was little short of feverish. She had never divulged poor Geoffry's presence with the waggon train, and shrank morbidly from doing so now. He might have escaped, but that he had fallen in the general massacre which overtook the unfortunate emigrants she could hardly doubt. This evening she was returning from a long walk, having gone out to join at luncheon her father and brother, who were shooting some distant coverts, and who would drive home by the road. She, preferring her solitary ramble through the fields and plantations, had left them early in the afternoon. The sharp air had brought a tinge of colour to her pale cheeks, as, defying its rigours in her warm winter dress and toque, she stepped along the woodland ride with the easy grace of a perfect physical organisation. An owl dropped softly from overhead, hooting as it glided along on noiseless pinions, the bark of a fox echoed from the depths of the brake; but these weird sounds amid the gathering mists of night caused her no uneasiness, let alone fear. She even stopped to listen to them with a wistful yearning, for in the cry of the wild creatures of the woods, and the swirl of the wind through the denuded branches, she seemed to feel once more borne back to those nights of peril and of fear--but oh! how sweet the recollection--in the wild and blood-stained West, to walk alone in the spirit presence of him whom her mortal eyes should never more behold. "Would to God we had died together!" she exclaimed aloud, her eyes dimmed with a rush of blinding tears. "Ah, why did I not die with him when it was still in my power to do so? Ah, why?" And the owl flitting ghostly through the brake, answered: "Tu-whoo--whoo-whoo!"