Meanwhile the sentinels at the several posts having been relieved, and every thing ready for their departure, the American army, leaving their arms piled in the area, commenced their evacuation of the Fort, the artillery and troops of the line taking the lead. Watchfully alive to the order that had been received, Captain Granville and Henry Grantham lingered near the gate, regarding, yet with an air of carelessness, every countenance among the irregular troops as they issued forth. Hitherto their search had been ineffectual, and to their great surprise, although the two last of the prisoners were now in the act of passing them, there was not the slightest trace of Desborough. It was well known that the fort had no other outlet, and any man attempting to escape over the ramparts, must have been seen and taken either by the troops or by the Indians, who in the far distance completely surrounded them. Captain Granville intimated the possibility of Henry Grantham having been deceived in the voice, but the latter as pertinaciously declared he could not be mistaken, for, independently, of his former knowledge of the man, his tones had so peculiarly struck him on the day when he made boastful confession of his father's murder, that no time could efface them from his memory. This short discussion terminated just as the last few files were passing. Immediately in the rear of these were the litters, on which were borne such of the wounded as could be removed from the hospital without danger. These were some thirty in number, and it seemed to both officers as somewhat singular, that the faces of all were, in defiance of the heat of the day, covered with the sheets that had been spread over each litter. For a moment the suspicion occurred to Grantham, that Desborough might be of the number; but when he reflected on the impossibility that any of the wounded men could be the same whose voice had sounded so recently in the full vigor of health in his ear, he abandoned the idea. Most of the wounded, as they passed, indicated by low and feeble moaning, the inconvenience they experienced from the motion to which they were subjected, and more or less expressed by the contortions of their limbs, the extent of their sufferings. An exception to this very natural conduct was remarked by Grantham, in the person of one occupying nearly a central position in the line, who was carried with difficulty by the litter-men. He lay perfectly at his length, and without any exhibition whatever of that impatient movement which escaped his companions. On the watchful eye of Grantham, this conduct was not lost. He had felt a strong inclination from the first, to uncover the faces of the wounded men in succession, and had only been restrained from so doing by the presence of the American medical officer who accompanied them, whom he feared to offend by an interference with his charge. Struck as he was however by the remarkable conduct of the