one of the objects which so powerfully arrested the attention of the officers on horseback. Two grim warriors supported between them the body of a woman of the European race, while a third stood behind her, on the top of the palisade with uplifted tomahawk. With one hand he held the weapon suspended over the head of the drooping victim, while with the other, he pointed to the neighbouring breach in the breastwork, with a look and gesture that seemed to say, "advance, and her fate is sealed!" Although the light from the smouldering fires was dim and unsteady, enough was caught of the outlines of this figure to thrill to the very heart-strings of the three spectators; she was upheld on either side by the mere strength of her guards--her feet seemed to have sunk from under her--but her head was erect and turning with wonderful rapidity from side to side, as she gazed with wild and glaring eyes upon the scene around her. Her fair silken tresses fell unrestrained upon her shoulders or were blown about in fluttering streams, as the unsteady light fell now in broad masses, and then in dim and shadowy rays. Her dress was white, and fell in ample folds around all that was left of a once symmetrical figure. Her features were ashy pale and attenuated to the last degree of human wretchedness, her eye shot forth the wild flashes of a frenzied mind. She was entirely unconscious of her danger, and though she seemed to examine the wild scene around, it was not with fear and trembling. A sickly smile played upon her death-like features, as if she rather took pleasure than suffered pain in these unusual sights, or saw embodied before her in palpable form somewhat of the fleeting phantasmagoria which had so long eluded her senses, yet she was speechless--and so were the late combatants.