ve contemned and slighted a credulity in which he in no way
participated himself, he had too much discrimination not to perceive,
that to have persevered in the capital punishment would have been to
have rendered himself personally obnoxious to the comrades of the
condemned, whose dispirited air and sullen mien, he clearly saw,
denounced the punishment as one of unnecessary rigour. The haughty
commander was not one to be intimidated by manifestations of
discontent; neither was he one to brook a spirit of insubordination,
however forcibly supported; but he had too much experience and military
judgment, not to determine that this was riot a moment, by foregoing an
act of compulsory clemency, to instil divisions in the garrison, when
the safety of all so much depended on the cheerfulness and unanimity
with which they lent themselves to the arduous duties of defence.

However originating in policy, the lenity he might have been induced to
have shown, all idea of the kind was chased from his mind by the
unfortunate action of the prisoner. At the moment when the distant
heights resounded with the fierce yells of the savages, and leaping
forms came bounding down the slope, the remarkable warrior of the Fleur
de lis--the fearful enemy who had whispered the most demoniac vengeance
in his ears the preceding night--was the only one that met and riveted
the gaze of the governor. He paused not to observe or to think who the
flying man could be of whom the mysterious warrior was in
pursuit,--neither did it, indeed, occur to him that it was a pursuit at
all. But one idea suggested itself to his mind, and that was an attempt
at rescue of the condemned on the part of his accomplice; and when at
length Halloway, who had at once, as if by instinct, recognised his
captain in the fugitive, shouted forth his gratitude to Heaven that "he
at length approached who alone had the power to save him," every shadow
of mercy was banished from the mind of the governor, who, labouring
under a natural misconception of the causes of his exulting shout, felt
that justice imperatively demanded her victim, and no longer hesitated
in awarding the doom that became the supposed traitor. It was under
this impression that he sternly gave and repeated the fatal order to
fire; and by this misjudged and severe, although not absolutely cruel
act, not only destroyed one of the noblest beings that ever wore a
soldier's uniform, but entailed upon himself and family that