But no one answered; and she again relapsed into the same ominous silence, and continued gazing with the same burning intensity, till the man, with a look of conscience-smitten agony, came up, and laying down his burden on the grass, gently turned it over, and presented to her the face of her slain husband; when shriek after shriek broke, in quick and startling succession, from her convulsed bosom, and she was carried, in a state of wild and fearful frenzy, into the house. The homicide was the tory husband, who, having met his victim in the fight, and acting, as he averred, under an irresistible impulse, had singled out and slain one, whom, the next moment, he would have given worlds to have been able to bring to life. [Footnote: The scene here introduced is drawn from an incident belonging to the local history of the battle of Bennington, and is but one among the many sad and touching occurrences which tradition has preserved as connected with that memorable conflict.] The scattered forces of the sky now again began to collect, the rain to descend, and the angry winds to roar through the surrounding forest, compelling both the assailed and assailants to retire from the fields and woods to their respective places of rendezvous for shelter. And soon night closed over the scene, and shrouded every object from view with its Egyptian darkness. Widely different were the feelings and impressions which the events of that afternoon had imparted to the troops of the two opposing armies. The advantages gained, though not very important or decisive, had yet been almost wholly on the side of the Americans. Their different parties of scouts and skirmishers, who, with the first slackening of the storm, had filled the woods in every direction around the British encampment, had slain or disabled, in the various encounters of the day, more than thirty of their opponents, and, among them, two Indian chiefs, whose destruction caused a rejoicing proportioned to the exasperation which their presence here had occasioned. And the effect of the whole had been to banish the last remaining doubts of success from their bosoms, and make them long for the hour when they should be permitted to meet the foe in regular battle. The losses and defeats of the royal forces, on the other hand, had proportionally depressed their feelings, and filled them with dark forebodings of the fate which was in store for them. Nor did these feelings, in conjunction with the natural effect of the gloom and physical discomforts of their situation, long fail of a characteristic manifestation among the contrasted bands of that fated army. And strange and fearful were the sights and sounds which their encampment exhibited during the night of storm and darkness that followed. The sullen oaths and outlandish grumbling of the Germans, delving and splashing away at their unfinished intrenchments,--the noisy execrations of the exasperated tories moving restlessly about from tent