"All was nearly over, and among the ashes of the smoking wigwams and the gashed corpses of king's soldiers and Indian warriors, I sat down beneath a great chestnut to wipe my musket, for butt, barrel, and bayonet were clotted with blood and human hair--ouf, man, why do you shudder? it was only Cherokee wool;--all was nearly over, I have said, when a low fierce cry, like the hoarse hiss of a serpent, rang in my ear; a brown and bony hand clutched my throat as the fangs of a wolf would have done, and hurled me to the earth! A tomahawk flashed above me, and an aged Indian's face, whose expression, was like that of a fiend, came close to mine, and I felt his breath upon my cheek. It was the visage of the sachem, but hollow with suffering and almost green with fury, and he laughed like a hyæna, as he poised the uplifted axe. "Another form intervened for a moment; it was that of the poor Indian girl I had so heartlessly deceived; she sought to stay the avenging hand of the frantic sachem; but he thrust her furiously aside, and in the next moment the glittering tomahawk was quivering in my brain--a knife swept round my head--my scalp was torn off, and I remember no more." "A fortunate thing for you," said Ewen, drily; "memory such as yours were worse than a knapsack to carry; and so you were killed there?" "Don't sneer, comrade," said Wooden-leg, with a diabolical gleam in his eye: "prithee, don't sneet; I was killed there, and, moreover, buried too, by the Scots Royals, when they interred the dead next day." "Then how came you to be here?" said Ewen, not very much at ease, to find himself in company with one he deemed a lunatic. "Here? that is my business--not yours," was the surly rejoinder. Ewen was silent, but reckoned over that now there were but thirty days to run until the 26th of April, when the stipulated year would expire. "Yes, comrade, just thirty days," said Wooden-leg, with an affirmative nod, divining the thoughts of Ewen; "and then I shall be off, bag and baggage, if my friends come." "If not?" "Then I shall remain where I am." "The Lord forbid!" thought Ewen; "but I can apply to the sheriff." "Death and fury! Thunder and blazes! I should like to see the rascal of a sheriff who would dare to meddle with me!" growled the old fellow, as his one eye shot fire, and, limping away, he ascended the stairs grumbling and swearing, leaving poor Ewen terrified even to think, on finding that his thoughts, although only half conceived, were at once divined and responded to by this strange inmate of his house. "His friends," thought Ewen, "who may they be?" Three heavy knocks rang on the floor overhead, as a reply. It was the wooden leg of the Cherokee invader. CHAPTER XXVIII. THE PHANTOM REGIMENT--THE MIDNIGHT MARCH.