tion all round, and promises to terminate better than Indian
skirmishes in general."

"Am I to suppose, sir, that you are about to desert your colours, in the
great corps of bachelors, and close the campaign with matrimony?"

"I, Tom Warley, turn Benedict! Faith, my dear boy, you little know the
corps you speak of, if you fancy any such thing. I do suppose there are
women in the colonies that a captain of Light Infantry need not disdain;
but they are not to be found up here, on a mountain lake; or even
down on the Dutch river where we are posted. It is true, my uncle, the
general, once did me the favor to choose a wife for me in Yorkshire;
but she had no beauty--and I would not marry a princess, unless she were
handsome."

"If handsome, you would marry a beggar?"

"Ay, these are the notions of an ensign! Love in a cottage--doors--and
windows--the old story, for the hundredth time. The 20th--don't marry.
We are not a marrying corps, my dear boy. There's the Colonel, Old Sir
Edwin-----, now; though a full General he has never thought of a wife;
and when a man gets as high as a Lieutenant General, without matrimony,
he is pretty safe. Then the Lieutenant Colonel is confirmed, as I tell
my cousin the bishop. The Major is a widower, having tried matrimony
for twelve months in his youth, and we look upon him, now, as one of our
most certain men. Out of ten captains, but one is in the dilemma, and
he, poor devil, is always kept at regimental headquarters, as a sort of
memento mori, to the young men as they join. As for the subalterns, not
one has ever yet had the audacity to speak of introducing a wife into
the regiment. But your arm is troublesome, and we'll go ourselves and
see what has become of Graham."

The surgeon who had accompanied the party was employed very differently
from what the captain supposed. When the assault was over, and the dead
and wounded were collected, poor Hetty had been found among the latter.
A rifle bullet had passed through her body, inflicting an injury that
was known at a glance to be mortal. How this wound was received, no one
knew; it was probably one of those casualties that ever accompany scenes
like that related in the previous chapter.

The Sumach, all the elderly women, and some of the Huron girls, had
fallen by the bayonet, either in the confusion of the melee, or from
the difficulty of distinguishing the sexes when the dress was so simple.
Much the greater portion of the warriors