n, stripping
every soldier to the skin.

While he lingered hesitatingly near the spot whence his friend had
been so singularly removed, waiting for the plunderers of the dead
to depart before he should rejoin his men, his ears were suddenly
assailed by a piercing shriek from the further extremity of the
underwood in which the latter were digging, and which extended
about two hundred yards on the left of the plain below. At once he
knew the cry, and comprehended its cause; and rushing down the
sandhill without thought of the new danger to which he might be
exposed, turned the corner of the small wood, and stopping abruptly
at a point where he could see without being noticed himself, beheld
A sight as distressing as, a few moments before, it had been
unexpected.

With his uncovered head slightly raised, and reposing upon the
projecting root of a tall tree that rose capriciously, yet
majestically, amid the stunted growth around, lay the enfeebled
and dying Ronayne extended upon a pile of clothing formed of the
very dresses that had now been doffed for the purpose by his escort.
By his side knelt his wife, disguised in the neat dress of one of
Wau-nan-gee's sisters, and gazing into his pale face with a silent
expression of agony which no language could render. But though his
face was wan, and his eye gradually losing its lustre, the arm of
the officer closely clasped around the waist of his wife, ever and
anon strained her so passionately, so convulsively to his heart
that a new fire seemed at these moments to be enkindled in both--and
to prove all the intensity of the undiminished love he bore her.
Neither spoke. Speech could not so well convey what was passing in
their sad souls as could their looks, while the exhausted state of
the wounded officer rendered exertion of any kind not merely painful
but impossible. On the other side of the Virginian, who held his
hand affectionately in his feeble grasp, stooped the young Indian
already noticed, and standing grouped round, and gazing with evident
sorrow on the scene, were his companions. The youth was Wau-nan-gee.
His companions were his immediate and devoted friends--those who
had sought to make the young officer a prisoner on a former occasion,
when, had they succeeded, all this trial of the wife's agony might
have been spared. On the first exit of the troops they had rushed
into the fort on the pretence of plunder and excess, in the hope
that their example would be imi