On the entrance of her lover, Lucy darted towards him, and exclaiming—"William, you too are safe!" threw herself sobbing on his neck. With a low cry of pain young Crosbie disengaged himself from Lucy’s embrace, and staggered back against the wall; while the excessive pallor overspreading his countenance attested the agony under which he laboured. "William!" shrieked Lucy, gazing on her lover’s face with lips white and trembling as his own, "you are wounded—perhaps mortally!" "Oh, no, dearest, it is nothing!" replied her lover, struggling manfully to regain his composure; "it is only a mere scratch in the shoulder; but a sudden twinge of pain caused me to wax somewhat faint——" "Ha, then; he hit you after all!" said Abel Armstrong, his brows contracting as he spoke. "How chanced it, William? by whom were you wounded?" anxiously inquired Lucy, who had in some measure regained her composure on being assured by one of the men who had proceeded to examine the wound, that it was not of a serious nature—the ball having merely grazed the fleshy part of the arm. "It was a cowardly dragoon who fired the shot," replied Abel Armstrong; "the fellow fled in this direction, and we pursued him on horses taken from the enemy. William Crosbie, who was far ahead of us all, called upon him to surrender; when, for answer, the dastardly fellow turned round in the saddle, and discharged his pistol at him, wounding him, as it now appears, in the shoulder. We soon lost sight of the fugitive in the darkness; but he seems to have found refuge somewhere in this neighbourhood, for we discovered his horse grazing at no very great distance from hence; but of the dragoon himself we saw nothing. "Why, how came these things here?" suddenly exclaimed one of the party, pointing, as he spoke, to the pieces of armour Mrs. Armstrong had taken off the person of her wounded guest ere removing him from the kitchen, and which, till that instant, had remained unobserved in a corner of the apartment. Mrs. Armstrong and Lucy exchanged quick glances of alarm, but vouchsafed no answer to the startling inquiry. "The fellow must be here!" said several of his companions; handling the triggers of their guns in a manner which boded no good to the unfortunate youth, should he fall into their hands. "Wife!" exclaimed Abel Armstrong in a low stern whisper, "you hear the inquiry—’How came these things here?’ Why answer ye not? Speak—I command you." "Oh, Abel, press me not to tell; indeed I cannot!" said the distracted woman, wringing her hands and gazing beseechingly in her husband’s face. "What!" he cried in wrath; "have you then dared to shelter one of our foes beneath this roof of mine? Woman, you have done me a foul wrong; but tell us instantly where you have concealed him, that we may yet revenge ourselves." "He lies there," said Mrs. Armstrong in trembling accents, and shrinking from the fiery glance of her husband’s eye.