The father and son were separated; neither could they converse. They rode along, now too miserable over the past to be concerned for the future. The laughing and talking of the dragoons they heeded no longer. Once Boyd was heard to say, in a suffocated voice, "The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away!" He knew what that meant now. After about an hour's slow progress, they entered a little defile between two low hills covered with pine-trees. As the middle of it was attained, Colonel Danforth, from the van of the column, raised his eyes to a covert, and then exclaimed, "Captain Jermain! Mr. Barkalow! Look up there--beside the white bowlder. Isn't that a man skulking?" Before the other two could answer, a shot rang out on the breeze. A dragoon cried out in anguish and fell from his horse, dead. Another shot followed--another. The figures of several men were now discernible above, leaping between the trees. "A surprise! a surprise! At them, every man of you! 'Tis a rescue!" called out Danforth and the other officers. But the volley that hailed on them with this order was so full and galling that it struck the troop with panic. Men were calling out in pain, or falling, right and left. A wild slogan echoed above and around from the dense shrubbery. The horses plunged, their riders rolling in the dust under their hoofs. Encumbered with their steeds, the soldiers were utterly unprepared for such an ambush. Each second came the bullets from the ensconced sharp-shooters. "Villains! cowards!" shouted Colonel Danforth; "will you fly from a pack of Highland wolves?" But as he lashed his horse up the bluff, what seemed to be the first of a horde of gigantic, half-crazed desperadoes rushed from the thicket upon the troopers, yelling again an undistinguishable cry, and brandishing naked weapons. This was too much even for Danforth. Over the bodies of a dozen dead or dying men of his escort, and a struggling horse or two, he fled amain, with all his cohort, regardless of aid to comrades or securing the two prisoners. But as the dragoon conducting Andrew pushed away the boy, he fired his pistol full at him. Gilbert struck his arm aside. He diverted the bullet from his son's brain to his own shoulder. And then, in a flash, the defile was abandoned to these uncouth and unknown friends, so disguised that they could not be distinguished one from the other. Amid a rush and sundry very disconnected reassurances, Gilbert and Andrew found themselves surrounded by their panting but victorious deliverers, and urged furiously up the almost inaccessible mountain-path.