speed. And the
gray gown and the calash which the youth had worn were found inside the
passage. And great was the wrath of Willinawaugh! He had blown up with
powder both ends of the passage,--like thunder, _een-ta-qua
ros-ke_,--use could no more be made of it. But some were sorry, wishing
the paleface to return by that way, so that he might be stabbed in
the dark windings of the passage. This was impossible now,
Choo-qualee-qualoo said, for the spring had burst forth, forced in a new
direction, and was flooding all that part of the slope, flowing outside
instead of within, and Willinawaugh could not now change its disposition
if he would.

Stuart breathed more freely. If Hamish should return alone, which God
forbid, and not with an armed force, the external changes wrought at
MacLeod Station would preclude his effort to enter into the cavern, and
force him to devise some other method of approach. He wondered at
Willinawaugh--to destroy so promising a trap! But rage may overpower at
times the most foxy craft.

The dull days, dragging on, seemed each interminable while the
beleaguered garrison watched the impassive horizon and awaited
developments, and hoped against hope. The wonted routine came to be
abridged of necessity; the men on their reduced fare were incapable of
drill duty; the best hope was that they might make shift to stand to
their arms should a sudden attack require the exertion of all their
reserve force in the imminent peril of their lives. The diet of
horse-flesh proved not only unpalatable but insanitary, perhaps because
the animals had thus far shared the physical distresses of the siege,
and were in miserable plight, and there were as many men on the sick
list as the hospital could accommodate; this misfortune was mitigated to
a degree when Choo-qualee-qualoo brought another bag of beans to the
hero of the long-range flirtation, and he generously offered to share
the food with his fellow-sufferers. Odalie suggested its devotion to
hospital uses; and a few days of a certain potage which she compounded
of the beans and her economic French skill, and administered with her
own hands to the invalids, with her own compassionate smiles, and with a
sauce of cheering words, put a number of the stouter fellows on their
feet again.

The efforts to amuse and entertain had given way under the stress of a
misery that could form no compact with mirth, but from time to time the
officers made short spirited addres