amply capable of taking care of himself, and if he were not--why, his scalp was not worth saving! He extricated himself with unflattered surprise from Hamish's frantic embrace that was like the frenzied hug of a young bear and made his ribs crack. "That's enough, Hamish; that's enough!" he said. "Of course I'm safe, all right. That's enough." He advanced with what grace he could command after such an exhibition to shake hands with the two officers near the sally-port and thank them for the shelter the fort had afforded his family. And here was Odalie,--for a good-natured soldier, one of the boat's crew of the previous evening, had instantly run to her cabin with the news of the arrival--restored to her normal poise in an instant, in the twinkling of an eye, by the shattering of her dismal forebodings in the glad reality of MacLeod's safety. So composed was her manner, so calmly happy, that Captain Stuart could not forbear to unmask the sham, and let the poor man know how he had been bewept yesterday at even. "We were very glad to take in the wanderers, although I cannot say it was a cheerful scene. I never realized until Mrs. MacLeod reached the gate here the meaning of the phrase 'dissolved in tears.'" Alexander looked anxiously at his wife--had she found the journey, then, so vexatious? "I was tired and dusty," she said demurely, as if in explanation. "My shoes--one of them was in tatters; and, Sandy, I was _so_ ashamed." Captain Stuart stared at her for a moment and broke into a laugh. "That's putting the shoe on the other foot, at all events," he said. He and Captain Demeré, accompanied by the newcomer, turned into the block-house, in order to question Sandy as to any information he might have been able to acquire concerning French emissaries, the disposition of the Cherokees, the devastation of the Virginia settlements, and any further news of General Forbes and the fall of Fort Duquesne now called Fort Pitt. However, Sandy had naught to report, save the angry threat with the tomahawk which gave way upon the assurance that the party was French. In the solitary journey with those who had resigned their boat to Willinawaugh, he had experienced no worse treatment than the destruction of his pocket compass. With this at first they had been highly delighted, but some ten miles from the fort they had been joined by an Indian who declared he had seen such things in Carolina, doubtless among land-surveyors, and who stigmatized it as a "land-stealer," forthwith crushing it with his tomahawk. MacLeod had expected this revelation to bring about ill-feeling, but the party shortly met the hunters of the post, who had insisted on conducting him to the fort on suspicion of being a Frenchman.