him, in God's mercy!" bellowed the Ranger Sammons, running up.
The Oneida's hatchet, swinging like lightning, flashed once; and the
severed soul of Walter Butler was free of the battered, disfigured
thing that lay oozing crimson in the trampled snow.

Dead! And I heard the awful scalp-yell swelling from the throats of
those who had felt his heavy hand. Dead! And I heard cheers from those
whose loved ones had gone down to death to satiate his fury. And now
he, too, was on his way to face those pale accusers waiting there to
watch him pass--specters of murdered men, phantoms of women, white
shapes of little children--God! what a path to the tribunal behind
whose thunderous gloom hell's own lightning flared!

As I gazed down at him the roar of the fusillade died away in my ears.
I remembered him as I had seen him there at New York in our house, his
slim fingers wandering over the strings of the guitar, his dark eyes
drowned in melancholy. I remembered his voice, and the song he sang,
haunting us all with its lingering sadness--the hopeless words, the sad
air, redolent of dead flowers--doom, death, decay!

The thrashing and plunging of horses roused me. I looked around to see
Colonel Willett ride up, followed by two or three mounted officers in
blue and buff, pulling in their plunging horses. He looked down at the
dead, studying the crushed face, the uniform, the blood-drenched snow.

"Is that Butler?" he asked gravely.

"Yes," I said; and drew a corner of his cloak across the marred face.

Nobody uncovered, which was the most dreadful judgment those silent men
could pass.

"Scalped?" motioned Colonel Lewis significantly.

"He belongs to your party," observed Willett quietly. Then, looking
around as the rifle-fire to the left broke out again: "The pursuit has
ended, gentlemen. What punishment more awful could we leave them to
than these trackless solitudes? For I tell you that those few among
them who shall attain the Canadas need fear no threat of hell in the
life to come, for they shall have served their turn. Sound the recall!"

I laid my hand upon his saddle, looking up into his face:

"Pardon," I said, in a low voice; "_I_ must go on!"

"Carus! Carus!" he said softly, "have they not told you?"

"Told me?" I stared. "What? What--in the name of God?"

"She was taken when we struck their rear-guard at one o'clock this
afternoon! Was there no one to tell you, lad!"

"Unharmed?" I asked, steadying myself aga