h, "and see that the
savages are gone. They will not harm you, and if any of them are still
here you can give me the alarm. I do not think they will fire on a poor
defenceless girl, and I at least may escape, until I shall be ready to
go among them of my own accord."

Hetty did as desired, Judith retiring a few yards from the platform the
instant her sister landed, in readiness for flight. But the last was
unnecessary, not a minute elapsing before Hetty returned to communicate
that all was safe.

"I've been in all the rooms, Judith," said the latter earnestly, "and
they are empty, except father's; he is in his own chamber, sleeping,
though not as quietly as we could wish."

"Has any thing happened to father?" demanded Judith, as her foot touched
the platform; speaking quickly, for her nerves were in a state to be
easily alarmed.

Hetty seemed concerned, and she looked furtively about her as if
unwilling any one but a child should hear what she had to communicate,
and even that she should learn it abruptly.

"You know how it is with father sometimes, Judith," she said, "When
overtaken with liquor he doesn't always know what he says or does, and
he seems to be overtaken with liquor now."

"That is strange! Would the savages have drunk with him, and then leave
him behind? But 'tis a grievous sight to a child, Hetty, to witness such
a failing in a parent, and we will not go near him 'til he wakes."

A groan from the inner room, however, changed this resolution, and the
girls ventured near a parent whom it was no unusual thing for them to
find in a condition that lowers a man to the level of brutes. He was
seated, reclining in a corner of the narrow room with his shoulders
supported by the angle, and his head fallen heavily on his chest. Judith
moved forward with a sudden impulse, and removed a canvass cap that was
forced so low on his head as to conceal his face, and indeed all but his
shoulders. The instant this obstacle was taken away, the quivering and
raw flesh, the bared veins and muscles, and all the other disgusting
signs of mortality, as they are revealed by tearing away the skin,
showed he had been scalped, though still living.

Chapter XXI.

"Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone,
And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him;
But nothing he'll reck, if they'll let him sleep on,
In the grave where a Briton has laid him."

Charles Wolfe, "The Burial of Sir John Moore," vi.

T