espair, as they gazed once more on the features
of those whom they had given up as lost for ever. But then, on the
other hand, was the soul's misery complete of the poor women,
widowed within the past few hours, who sought eagerly but in vain
to distinguish the features of him who alone could console her
under a similar bereavement, and who, with tears and sobs, sank
back again into the wagon, in all the agony of increased and
confirmed despair. It required stern hearts to behold all this
unmoved; but the knowledge that their wives had been unharmed,
whatever the savage destruction of their children, brought some
little relief to the overcharged hearts of such of the married men
as had been spared, and in their secret hearts they returned thanks
to the Providence that had guarded not only their own lives, but
the lives of those most dear to them.

CHAPTER XXV.

And with what feelings did they now re-enter the fort, and what an
aspect did it present! Half-drunken Indians were yet engaged in
the work of plunder and destruction, insomuch so that it scarcely
appeared to them the same place from which they had sallied out in
the morning; and there were moments when the stoutest-hearted wished
that they had never returned to it, but perished on the field where
their comrades lay, unconscious of the past, regardless of the
future of desolation, of which all they saw seemed to give promise.
The officers' quarters, and the blockhouses, which had afforded
them protection and shelter during many a long year, were now burst
open, and every article of heavy bedding and furniture hurled into
the square--the latter ripped open, and broken, and the feathers
and fragments strewn around as if in mockery of the neatness that
had ever been a distinctive characteristic of the well--swept parade
ground, where heretofore a pin might have been picked up without
a finger being soiled in the act. These were, seemingly, too minute
considerations to have weighed at such a moment when higher and
more important interests were at stake; but, to the well-regulated
eye of the soldier, accustomed to order and decorum, they were now
mountains of inequality and discomfort, which contributed as much
to the annoyance and mortification of his position as the very fact
of captivity itself; and if this was the feeling generally of the
men, how deep must have been its effect on the officers, and
particularly on Capt. Headley, who had ever been punctili