sh you a most pleasant
journey."

With doffed hat, he struck spurs into his nettlesome horse, and was
gone; while the ringing notes of the bugle called the waiting column to
attention.

I watched with deepening interest all that was taking place before me.
The heavy log-gates were unbarred, swung slowly inward, and left
unguarded. Captain Heald uttered a single stern word of command, and
Captain Wells, with a squad of his Miamis pressing hard at his horse's
heels, rode slowly through the opening out into the flood of sunshine.
Captain Heald and Mr. Kinzie, side by side, with Mrs. Heald mounted
upon a spirited bay horse a yard in their rear, followed close; and
then to Lieutenant Helm's grave order the sturdy column of infantrymen,
heavily equipped and marching in column of fours, swept in solemn curve
about the post of the gate, and filed out through the narrow entrance.
The regular tramp-tramp, the evident discipline, and the confident look
of the men, impressed me. While I was watching them, the small
garrison band began suddenly to play, and the smiling soldier faces
clouded as they glanced around in questioning surprise.

"Saint Guise!" ejaculated De Croix, uneasily; "it is the Dead March!"

I marked the sudden look of terrified astonishment in Mademoiselle's
eyes, and dropped my hand upon hers where it rested against the
saddle-pommel. Ensign Ronan spurred swiftly back down the column, with
an angry face, and hushed the ill sound by a sharp order.

"Another tune, you fool, or none at all!" he said, peremptorily. "The
foul fiend himself must have assumed charge of our march to-day."

As the column marched away, the groaning wagons one by one fell into
line behind it, until at last our own turn came, and De Croix and I,
each with a hand upon the bridle-rein of Mademoiselle's spirited horse,
rode between the gate-posts out to where we had full view of that
stirring scene below.

It was a fair, bright morning, with hardly so much as a fleecy white
cloud in all the expanse of sky; glorious sunlight was flashing its
prismatic colors over a lake surface barely ruffled by the faintest
breeze. Never did Nature smile more brightly back into my eyes than
then, as I gazed out over the broad plain where the glow of the summer
reflected back in shimmering waves from the tawny prairie and
glittering sand. With all its desolation, it was a picture to be
treasured long; nor has a single detail of it ever left my memor