There is an episode in the history of their homeward march, which illustrates another characteristic of the ranger--his ruthlessness. The same spirit which led him to disregard physical obstacles, prevented his shrinking from even direful necessities. One of the prisoners whom they had liberated, became exhausted and unable to proceed. They could not carry him, and would not have him to die of starvation in the wilderness. They could not halt with him, lest the same fate should overtake them, which had defeated the enterprise of Brady. But one alternative remained, and though, to us, it appears cruel and inhuman, it was self-preservation to them, and mercy, in a strange guise, to the unhappy victim--_he was despatched by the hand of the leader_, and buried upon the prairie! His grave is somewhere near the head-waters of the Wabash, and has probably been visited by no man from that day to this! Mournful reflections cluster round such a narrative as this, and we are impelled to use the word "atrocious" when we speak of it. It was certainly a bloody deed, but the men of those days were not nurtured in drawing-rooms, and never slept upon down-beds. A state of war, moreover, begets many evils, and none of them are more to be deplored than the occasional occurrence of such terrible necessities. The ranger-character, like the pioneer-nature of which it was a phase, was compounded of various and widely-differing elements. No one of his evil qualities was more prominent than several of the good; and, I am sorry to say, none of the good was more prominent than several of the bad. No class of men did more efficient service in defending the western settlements from the inroads of the Indians; and though it seems hard that the war should sometimes have been carried into the country of the untutored savage by civilized men, with a severity exceeding his own, we should remember that we can not justly estimate the motives and feelings of the ranger, without first having been exasperated by his sufferings and tried by his temptations. V. THE REGULATOR. "Thieves for their robbery have authority, When judges steal themselves."-- MEASURE FOR MEASURE.