Meanwhile the picket pass and find his post deserted, and, of course, his life forfeited. He is condemned to die, and Colonel Campbell is appointed to superintend his execution. The circumstances transpire. A reprieve is sent by the commanding officer with secret orders, however, that the sentence be pushed on to all but the last, and not till the prisoner's prayers are over, and the death fillet bound, is the pardon to be produced. The morrow came, the evening sun Was sinking red and cold, When Ronald Blair a league from camp Was led erect and bold, To die a soldier's death, while low The funeral drum was rolled. The musketeers advance to ask the signal when they are to shoot, Campbell tells them, "Reserve your fire till I produce this blue handkerchief." The prayer is said, the eyes are bound, the doomed soldier kneels. There is such a silence that a tear might have been heard falling to the ground. Campbell's heart beats high with joy and fear to think that by drawing out the pardon in his pocket he is to turn despair into delight. He keeps his hand a moment longer on the reprieve, and then draws it forth, but with it drew--O God, the handkerchief; the soldiers fire, Ronald Blair falls, and his Indian maid is found clasping his dead body to her breast and dying by his side, and the frenzied Colonel exclaims--"The Curse of Heaven and of Glencoe is here." The troops left the glen with a vast booty--900 kine, 200 ponies, and many sheep and goats. When they had departed the Macdonalds crept from their lurking places, went back to the spot, collected the scorched carcasses from among the ruins, and buried them there. It is said that the Bard of the Clan took his place on a rock opposite the scene of the massacre and poured out a lament over his slaughtered kinsmen and their desolate dwellings. The subject had been worthy of an Ossian. The scene there is now changed. A house or two only remains where smoked hundreds of happy hearths. The thistle and the wild myrtle shake their heads in the winds, and utter their low monody which mingles with, and is swelled by the voice of the Cona, all seeming to mourn over crime, and to pronounce for doom. Yet let our conclusion be that of the Judge of the earth Himself when he says vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord, and who mixes mercy with judgment, and makes the wrath of man to praise him in pardon as well as by punishment. Yet this stupendous crime was not to pass wholly unpunished. It was a considerable time ere its particulars and aggravations were fully known. Conceive such an atrocious massacre perpetrated now! In less than seven days there would be a cry of vengeance from the Land's End to Caithness. Within a fortnight demands for the blood of the murderers would be coming in from every part of the British dominions. In a month the ringleaders would have been tried, condemned, and hanged, and even Mr Bruce, the late