"There was treachery, and perhaps perjury, too. He had an insidious and unscrupulous enemy, who assumed the guise of repentance, and candor, and friendship, the better to lure him into his toils--it was the infamous Colonel Thorg, who received the command of the regiment, in reward for his great services in America. And Michael's only powerful friend, who could and would have saved him--was dead. General Ross, you are aware, was killed in the battle of Baltimore." "God have mercy on poor Edith! How long has it been since, this happened, my dear girl?" "When they reached Toronto, in Canada West, the regiment commanded by Thorg was about to sail for England. On its arrival at York, in England, a court-martial was formed, and Michael was brought to trial. There was a great deal of personal prejudice, distortion of facts, and even perjury--in short, he was condemned and sentenced one day and led out and shot the next!" There was silence between them then. Henrietta sat in pale and speechless horror. "But how long is it since my poor Edith has been so awfully widowed?" at length inquired Mrs. Waugh. "Nearly four months," replied Marian, in a tremulous voice. "For six weeks succeeding his death, she was not able to rise from her bed. I came from school to nurse her. I found her completely prostrated under the blow. I wonder she had not died. What power of living on some delicate frames seem to have. As soon as she was able to sit up, I began to think that it would be better to remove her from the strange country, the theatre of her dreadful sufferings, and to bring her to her own native land, among her own friends and relatives, where she might resume the life and habits of her girlhood, and where, with nothing to remind her of her loss, she might gradually come to look upon the few wretched months of her marriage, passed in England, as a dark dream. Therefore I have brought her back." "And you, my dear child," she said, "you were Michael Shields' sister?"