that had almost ceased to breathe, answered the convulsive motion which indicated the last struggle of their beloved comrade.[14] Then it was that they began to feel that they could have died for him, and might have saved him. But it was now too late; and prudence timely interposed to prevent a rash explosion. The armed myrmidons of Albert were about them. He, himself, in complete armor, with his satellite, Pierre Renaud, also fully armed, standing beside him; and it was evident that every preparation had been made to quell insubordination, and punish the refractory with as sharp and sudden a judgment as that which had just descended upon their comrade. [14] Says Charlevoix:--"Il pendit lui-même un soldat, qui n'avoit point merité la mort, il en dégrada un autre des armes avec aussi peu de justice, puis il l'exila, et l'on crut que son dessein étoit de le laisser mourir de faim et de misere, etc." But we must not anticipate the revelations of the text. The poor Monaletta, crouching in the cover of the woods, recovered from her stupor in the cool air of the morning, but it was sunset before she could regain the necessary strength to move. Then it was, that, with the natural tendency of a loving heart, curious only about the fate of him for whom alone her heart desired life, she bent her steps towards that cruel fortress which had been the source of so much misery to both. Very feeble and slow was her progress, but it was still too rapid; it brought her too soon to a knowledge of that final blow which fell, with worse terrors than the scourge, upon the soul. She arrived in season to behold the form of the unfortunate Guernache, abandoned by all, and totally lifeless, waving in the wind from the branches of a perished oak, directly in front of the fortress. The deepest sorrows of the heart are those which are born dumb. There are some woes which the lip can never speak, nor the pen describe. There are some agonies over which we draw the veil without daring to look upon them, lest we freeze to stone in the terrible inspection. There is no record of that grief which seized upon the heart of the poor Indian woman, Monaletta, as she gazed upon the beloved but unconscious form of her husband. She approached it not, though watching it from sunset till the gray twilight lapsed away into the denser shadows of the night. But, with the dawn of day, when the Frenchmen looked forth from the fortress for the body of their comrade, it had disappeared. They searched for it in vain. From that day Monaletta disappeared also. She was neither to be found in the neighboring woods, nor among the people of her kindred. But, long afterwards they told, with shuddering and apprehension, of a voice upon the midnight air, which resembled that of their murdered comrade, followed always by the piercing shriek of a woman, which reminded them of the dreadful utterance of the Indian woman, when first smitten upon the shoulders by the lash of the ruffian.