ou truant! thou recreant knight! he who abandons his damsels in
the very lists!" she cried; "here have we been days, nay, ages,
expecting you at our feet, imploring mercy and forgetfulness of your
craven backsliding, or, I should rather say, back-running--for verily
you fled in a manner that no stricken deer, as our worthy friend the
scout would say, could equal!"

"You know that Alice means our thanks and our blessings," added the
graver and more thoughtful Cora. "In truth, we have a little wondered
why you should so rigidly absent yourself from a place where the
gratitude of the daughters might receive the support of a parent's
thanks."

"Your father himself could tell you, that though absent from your
presence, I have not been altogether forgetful of your safety," returned
the young man; "the mastery of yonder village of huts," pointing to the
neighboring entrenched camp, "has been keenly disputed; and he who holds
it is sure to be possessed of this fort, and that which it contains. My
days and my nights have all been passed there since we separated,
because I thought that duty called me thither. But," he added with an
air of chagrin, which he endeavored, though unsuccessfully, to conceal,
"had I been aware that what I then believed a soldier's conduct could so
be construed, shame would have been added to the list of reasons."

"Heyward!--Duncan!" exclaimed Alice, bending forward to read his
half-averted countenance, until a lock of her golden hair rested on her
flushed cheek, and nearly concealed the tear that had started to her
eye; "did I think this idle tongue of mine had pained you, I would
silence it forever, Cora can say, if Cora would, how justly we have
prized your services, and how deep--I had almost said, how fervent--is
our gratitude."

"And will Cora attest the truth of this?" cried Duncan, suffering the
cloud to be chased from his countenance by a smile of open pleasure.
"What says our graver sister? Will she find an excuse for the neglect of
the knight in the duty of a soldier?"

Cora made no immediate answer, but turned her face towards the water, as
if looking on the sheet of the Horican. When she did bend her dark eyes
on the young man, they were yet filled with an expression of anguish
that at once drove every thought but that of kind solicitude from his
mind.

"You are not well, dearest Miss Munro!" he exclaimed; "we have trifled
while you are in suffering."

"'Tis nothing," she answered,