As he spoke, there came into the den eight men attired like the two first, who were included in the number, all of them with green stuff shirts, edged and furbelowed with wolf, raccoon, and other skins, leather leggings and moccasins, and fur caps with hawks' feathers sticking in them. Each bore a thick rifle in his hand, and had a long knife in his pouch-belt, as well as a light axe suspended, quiver-wise, over his shoulder. They were dark, fierce-looking men, and perhaps an unusual degree of sternness was communicated to their features by the fearful duty they had now in hand. They led with them, or rather carried, for he was bound hand and foot, a ninth man, dressed in many respects like themselves, though he wore an old military hat, and was without leggings or moccasins. His countenance was as rude as those of the others; but instead of exhibiting the same cold and stern resolution, betrayed a look of dogged sullenness, mingled with anxiety. As soon as he was brought into the little inclosure, he was tossed, with but little ceremony, at the feet of the tory captain, the band forming a circle around,--each, as if by previous concert, drawing the tomahawk from his back, and resting his left hand upon his rifle. "Oho!" said Sterling, looking into the prisoner's face, "whom have we here? 'By this light, a most perfidious and drunken monster!' 'Most reverend seignior, do you know my voice?' 'Oho, my sprightly Scot of Scots, Douglas, that run'st o' horseback up a hill perpendicular!' Why this rascal was he, one John Parker, a soldier on the lines, that nabbed me, being too drunk to understand the claims of my coat to better treatment. Oh, you vagabond, I knew you would come to the gallows!" "Raise him on his feet," said the tory leader; then turning to the volunteer, he drew from his bosom a soiled and crumpled paper, which he put into Sterling's hands, saying, with a sternness that was perhaps assumed to cover the shame he felt at his own ignorance,-- "Read it.--Our merry men here can make nothing of such pothooks. Read it aloud; and then we'll proceed to judgment." The volunteer obeyed, and succeeded in deciphering a scrawl, of a style of composition and penmanship so similar to that Miss Falconer had shown the Captain's daughter, that, had he ever seen the latter, he could have been at no loss to identify the correspondent. It was brief, and clear, and to the following effect: "Honourable Madam to command--