aldimar,--for it was
he,--beat audibly against the cheek that still reposed on his breast;
but when his sister had, in a faint voice, closed her melancholy
narrative with the manner of her cousin's disappearance, he gave a
sudden start, uttering at the same time an exclamation of joy.

"Thank God, she still lives!" he cried, pressing his sister once more
in fondness to his heart; then turning to his companion, who, although
seemingly abstracted, had been a silent and attentive witness of the
scene,--"By Heaven! Valletort, there is yet a hope. She it was indeed
whom we saw borne out of the fort, and subsequently made to walk by the
cruel Indian who had charge of her."

"Valletort, Valletort," murmured Clara unconsciously, her sick heart
throbbing with she knew not what. "How is this, Frederick?--Where,
then, is Captain Baynton? and how came you here?"

"Alas! Clara, poor Baynton is no more. Even at the moment when he
confided the unconscious burden, preserved at the peril of his own
life, to the arms of Sir Everard here, he fell beneath the tomahawk of
a pursuing savage. Poor, noble, generous Baynton," he continued,
mournfully; "to him, indeed, Clara, are you indebted for your life; yet
was it purchased at the price of his own."

Again the pained and affectionate girl wept bitterly, and her brother
proceeded:--

"The strange object you saw on the lake, my love, was nothing more than
a canoe disguised with leafy boughs, in which Sir Everard Valletort and
myself, under the guidance of old Francois of the Fleur de lis, whom
you must recollect, have made the dangerous passage of the Sinclair in
the garb of duck hunters,--which latter we had only discarded on
reaching the schooner, in order to assume another we conceived better
suited to our purpose. Alas!" and he struck his hand violently against
his brow, "had we made directly for the shore without touching the
vessel at all, there might have been time to save those we came to
apprise of their danger. Do you not think there was, Valletort?"

"Most assuredly not," returned his companion, anxious to remove the
impression of self-blame that existed in the mind of Captain de
Haldimar. "From the moment of our reaching the schooner, which lay
immediately in our route, to that when the shout was raised by the
savages as they rushed into the fort, there was scarcely an interval of
three minutes; and it would have required a longer period to have
enabled us even to gain the s