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."