in
safety; and I trust you will yet preserve a life so necessary to your
friends and country.' He answered me with the kindest expressions, but
with a feeble voice, 'Campbell, I have consented to fly, more for the
sake of preserving your life than from any hopes of my own; but since we
are at a distance from yonder dreadful scene, permit me to alight; I
have consumed my small remaining forces in the way, and now I am faint
from loss of blood.' He sunk down at this, and would have fallen, but I
received him in my arms; I bore him to the next thicket, and, strewing
grass and leaves upon the ground, endeavoured to prepare him a bed. He
thanked me again with gratitude and tenderness, and grasped my hand as
he lay in the very agonies of death, for such it was, although I
believed he had only fainted, and long tried every ineffectual method to
restore departed life. Thus was I deprived of the noblest officer and
kindest friend that ever deserved the attachment of a soldier. Twenty
years have now rolled over me since that inauspicious day, yet it lives
for ever in my remembrance, and never shall be blotted from my soul.
(The Highlander then turned away to hide a tear, which did not misbecome
his manly countenance; the company seemed all to share his griefs, but
Miss Simmons above the rest. However, as the natural gentleness of her
temper was sufficiently known, no one suspected that she had any
particular interest in the relation.)

"I sat till night (continued the stranger) supporting the breathless
body of my colonel, and vainly hoping he might return to life. At length
I perceived that his noble soul was fled for ever. My own wounds grew
stiff and painful, and exhausted nature required a supply of food; I
therefore arose, and finding a spring that trickled down a hill at no
great distance, I refreshed myself by a copious draught, and washed the
clotted blood away from the hurts I had received. I then crushed some
leaves, which the inhabitants of that country imagine salutary, and
bound them on with bandages which I tore from my linen; I also found a
few wild fruits, which past experience had taught me were innocent, and
with them I allayed the pains of hunger. I then returned to the thicket,
and, creeping into the thickest part, endeavoured to compose myself to
rest.

"Strange, gentlemen, as it may appear, neither the forlorn nature of my
situation, nor the dangers with which I was beset, were sufficient to
keep me awake;