a death no human power might avert.
By Heaven! I would give up half my own being to be able to reanimate
that form once more,--but the wish is vain."

"Who shall announce the intelligence to his sister?" sighed his
companion. "Never will that already nearly heart-broken girl be able to
survive the shock of her brother's death. Blessington, you alone are
fitted to such a task; and, painful as it is, you must undertake it. Is
the colonel apprised of the dreadful truth, do you know?"

"He is. It was told him at the moment of our arrival last night; but
from the little outward emotion displayed by him, I should be tempted
to infer he had almost anticipated some such catastrophe."

"Poor, poor Charles!" bitterly exclaimed Sir Everard Valletort--for it
was he. "What would I not give to recall the rude manner in which I
spurned you from me last night. But, alas! what could I do, laden with
such a trust, and pursued, without the power of defence, by such an
enemy? Little, indeed, did I imagine what was so speedily to be your
doom! Blessington," he pursued, with increased emotion, "it grieves me
to wretchedness to think that he, whom I loved as though he had been my
twin brother, should have perished with his last thoughts, perhaps,
lingering on the seeming unkindness with which I had greeted him after
so anxious an absence."

"Nay, if there be blame, it must attach to me," sorrowfully observed
Captain Blessington. "Had Erskine and myself not retired before the
savage, as we did, our unfortunate friend would in all probability have
been alive at this very hour. But in our anxiety to draw the former
into the ambuscade we had prepared for him, we utterly overlooked that
Charles was not retreating with us."

"How happened it," demanded Sir Everard, his attention naturally
directed to the subject by the preceding remarks, "that you lay thus in
ambuscade, when the object of the expedition, as solicited by Frederick
de Haldimar, was an attempt to reach us in the encampment of the
Indians?"

"It certainly was under that impression we left the fort; but, on
coming to the spot where the friendly Indian lay waiting to conduct us,
he proposed the plan we subsequently adopted as the most likely, not
only to secure the escape of the prisoners, whom he pledged himself to
liberate, but to defend ourselves with advantage against Wacousta and
the immediate guard set over them, should they follow in pursuit.
Erskine approving, as well as m