watched his changing
countenance, and sought with generous art to wile him to his own good.

"Perhaps I deceive myself in regard to the time I have to live," he
resumed. "It may be that, with speedy assistance, I might recover of my
wound. The foremost fugitives must, ere this, have carried tidings of
our fatal battle to the frontiers, and parties will be out to succor
those in like condition with ourselves. Should you meet one of these
and guide them hither, who can tell but that I may sit by my own
fireside again?"

A mournful smile strayed across the features of the dying man as he
insinuated that unfounded hope,--which, however, was not without its
effect on Reuben. No merely selfish motive, nor even the desolate
condition of Dorcas, could have induced him to desert his companion at
such a moment--but his wishes seized on the thought that Malvin's life
might be preserved, and his sanguine nature heightened almost to
certainty the remote possibility of procuring human aid.

"Surely there is reason, weighty reason, to hope that friends are not
far distant," he said, half aloud. "There fled one coward, unwounded,
in the beginning of the fight, and most probably he made good speed.
Every true man on the frontier would shoulder his musket at the news;
and, though no party may range so far into the woods as this, I shall
perhaps encounter them in one day's march. Counsel me faithfully," he
added, turning to Malvin, in distrust of his own motives. "Were your
situation mine, would you desert me while life remained?"

"It is now twenty years," replied Roger Malvin,--sighing, however, as
he secretly acknowledged the wide dissimilarity between the two
cases,-"it is now twenty years since I escaped with one dear friend
from Indian captivity near Montreal. We journeyed many days through the
woods, till at length overcome with hunger and weariness, my friend lay
down and besought me to leave him; for he knew that, if I remained, we
both must perish; and, with but little hope of obtaining succor, I
heaped a pillow of dry leaves beneath his head and hastened on."

"And did you return in time to save him?" asked Reuben, hanging on
Malvin's words as if they were to be prophetic of his own success.

"I did," answered the other. "I came upon the camp of a hunting party
before sunset of the same day. I guided them to the spot where my
comrade was expecting death; and he is now a hale and hearty man upon
his own farm, far within th