The captain started from his chair, but before he could frame another word, Ellen had caught hold of the old man's arm, and wildly exclaimed, "Do you mean--do you mean, pray tell me, Sergeant Allen!--Have the natives met papa's troop, and have they fought?--and--is he hurt--is he killed?" The man could not answer her--for her look and tone, he afterward declared to his comrades, went through his heart, just for all the world like a saber cut; and for the moment neither Captain nor Mrs. Cameron could address her. The shock seemed to have banished voice from all, save from the poor child principally concerned. "Stay with me, my dear Ellen!" Mrs. Cameron at length said, advancing to her, as she stood still clinging to the sergeant's arm: "the captain will go and meet your father, and if he be wounded, we will nurse him together, dearest! Stay with me." "No, no, no!" was the agonized reply; "let me go to him, he may die before they bring him here, and I shall never feel his kiss or hear him bless me again. He told me he should fall in battle--oh! Mrs. Cameron, pray let me go to him?" And they who knew all which that father was to his poor Ellen, could not resist that appeal. The sergeant said the colonel was not dead, but so mortally wounded they feared to move him. It was a fearful scene. Death in its most horrid form was all around her; her little feet were literally deluged in blood, and she frequently stumbled over the dusky forms and mangled and severed limbs that lay on the grass, but neither sob nor cry escaped her till she beheld her father. His men had removed him from the immediate scene of slaughter, and tried to form a rough pallet of military cloaks, but the ghastly countenance, which the moon's light rendered still more fixed and pallid, the rigidity of his limbs, all seemed to denote they had indeed arrived too late, and that terrible stillness was broken by the convulsed and passionate sobs of the poor child, who, flinging herself beside him, besought him only to open his eyes, to look upon her once more, to call her his darling, and kiss her once, only once again: and it seemed as if her voice had indeed power to recall the fluttering soul. The heavy eyes did unclose, the clenched hand relaxed to try and clasp his child, and he murmured feebly-- "How came you here, my poor darling Ellen? are friends here?--is that Cameron's voice?" The captain knelt down by him and convulsively pressed his hand, but he could not speak. "God bless you, Cameron! Take my poor child to her mother--implore her--to--and it is to-night, this very night--she and my boy are happy--and I--and my poor Ellen--" A fearful convulsion choked his voice, but after a little while he tried to speak again--