es, oaths, voices calling to each other, and the reports of muskets,
were now quick and incessant, and, apparently, on every side of them.
Suddenly a strong glare of light flashed across the scene, the fog
rolled upward in thick wreaths, and several cannons belched across the
plain, and the roar was thrown heavily back from the bellowing echoes of
the mountain.

"'Tis from the fort!" exclaimed Hawkeye, turning short on his tracks;
"and we, like stricken fools, were rushing to the woods, under the very
knives of the Maquas."

The instant their mistake was rectified, the whole party retraced the
error with the utmost diligence. Duncan willingly relinquished the
support of Cora to the arm of Uncas and Cora as readily accepted the
welcome assistance. Men, hot and angry in pursuit, were evidently on
their footsteps, and each instant threatened their capture, if not their
destruction.

"Point de quartier aux coquins!" cried an eager pursuer, who seemed to
direct the operations of the enemy.

"Stand firm, and be ready, my gallant Sixtieths!" suddenly exclaimed
a voice above them; "wait to see the enemy, fire low and sweep the
glacis."

"Father! father!" exclaimed a piercing cry from out the mist: "it is I!
Alice! thy own Elsie! Spare, oh! save your daughters!"

"Hold!" shouted the former speaker, in the awful tones of parental
agony, the sound reaching even to the woods, and rolling back in solemn
echo. "'Tis she! God has restored me to my children! Throw open the
sally-port; to the field, Sixtieths, to the field; pull not a trigger,
lest ye kill my lambs! Drive off these dogs of France with your steel."

Duncan heard the grating of the rusty hinges, and darting to the spot,
directed by the sound, he met a long line of dark red warriors, passing
swiftly toward the glacis. He knew them for his own battalion of the
Royal Americans, and flying to their head, soon swept every trace of his
pursuers from before the works.

For an instant, Cora and Alice had stood trembling and bewildered by
this unexpected desertion; but before either had leisure for speech, or
even thought, an officer of gigantic frame, whose locks were bleached
with years and service, but whose air of military grandeur had been
rather softened than destroyed by time, rushed out of the body of mist,
and folded them to his bosom, while large scalding tears rolled down his
pale and wrinkled cheeks, and he exclaimed, in the peculiar accent of
Scotland:

"F