The day on which that Council was held, was characterized by one of those sudden outbursts of elemental war, so common to the Canadas in early summer, and which, in awful grandeur of desolation, are frequently scarcely inferior to the hurricanes of the tropics. The morning had been oppressively sultry, and there was that general and heavy lethargy of nature that usually precedes a violent reaction. About noon a small, dark speck was visible in the hitherto cloudless horizon, and this presently grew in size until the whole western sky was one dense mass of threatening black, which eventually spread itself over the entire surface of the heavens leaving not a hand's breadth anywhere visible. Presently, amid the sultry stillness that prevailed, there came a slight breeze over the face of the waters, and then, as if some vast battering train had suddenly opened its hundred mouths of terror, vomiting forth showers of grape and other missiles, come astounding thunder-claps, and forked lightnings, and rain, and hail, and whistling wind--all in such terrible union, yet such fearful disorder, that man, the last to take warning, or feel awed by the anger of the common parent, Nature, bent his head in lowliness and silence to her voice, and awaited tremblingly the passing away of her wrath. Henry Grantham, whose turn of duty had again brought him to Amherstburg, was in the mess-room of the garrison when the storm was at the fiercest. Notwithstanding the excitement of the council-scene, at which he had been present, he had experienced an unusual depression throughout the day, originating partly in the languid state of the atmosphere, but infinitely more in the anxiety under which he labored in regard to his brother, of whom no other intelligence had been received, since his departure with his prisoners for Buffalo, than what vague rumor, coupled with the fact of the continued absence of the schooner, afforded. That the vessel had been captured by the enemy there could be no doubt; but, knowing as he did, the gallant spirit of Gerald, there was reason to imagine that he had not yielded to his enemies, before every means of resistance had been exhausted: and if so, what might not have been the effect of his obstinacy, if such a term could be applied to unshaken intrepidity, on men exasperated by opposition and eager for revenge. In the outset he had admitted his gentle cousin Gertrude to his confidence, as one most suited, by her docility, to soothe without appearing to remark on his alarm, but when, little suspecting the true motive of her agitation, he saw her evince an emotion surpassing his own, and admitting and giving way to fears beyond any he would openly avow, he grew impatient and disappointed, and preferring rather to hear the tocsin of alarm sounded from his own heart than from the lips of another, he suddenly, and much to the surprise of the affectionate girl, discontinued all allusion to the subject. But Henry's anxiety was not