in his own
garb, which he had worn beneath the prim feminine attire,--this he had
carefully rolled into a bundle and stowed in a cleft in the rocks of the
underground passage,--he issued into a night as sweet, as lonely, and as
still, in that vast woodland, as if there were no wars or rumors of wars
in all the earth. But, alas! for the sight of Odalie's home that she had
loved and made so happy, and where he had been as cherished as Fifine
herself,--all grim, charred ashes; and poor Dill's cabin!--he knew by
this time that Dill was dead, very dead, or he would have come back to
them. The fields, too, that they had sown, and that none would reap,
trampled and torn, and singed and burnt! Hamish gave but one sigh,
bursting from an overcharged heart; then he was away at full speed in
the darkness that was good to him, and the only friend he had in the
world with the power to help him and his.

Captain Demere that night was more truly cheerful than he had been for a
long time, despite his usual port of serene, although somewhat austere,
dignity.

"The boy has all the homing qualities you desired in an express," he
said to Stuart. "He will come back to his brother's family as certainly
as a man with wife and children, and yet in quitting them he leaves no
duty to devolve on others."

"Moreover," said Stuart, "we have the satisfaction of knowing that he
safely reached the mouth of the underground passage without detection.
He could not have found the place in a dark night. In the moonlight he
would have been seen, and even if we had protected his entrance by a
cannonade, and cleared the woods, his exit at the other end of the
passage would have been intercepted. Disguised as Mrs. MacLeod, seeking
to meet Choo-qualee-qualoo in bold daylight, he passed without a
suspicion on the part of the Indians. And we know that the exit of the
passage at MacLeod Station is fully three miles in the rear of the
Indian line. I feel sure that the other two expresses never got beyond
the Indian line. This is the best chance we have had."

"And a very good chance," said Demere.

Stuart could but laugh a little, remembering that Demere had thought the
plan impracticable, and, although there was no other opportunity
possible, had protested against it on the point of danger involved to
Mrs. MacLeod. Stuart, himself, had quaked on this score, and had seized
on this ingenious device only as a last resort.

"Mrs. MacLeod is fine timber for a for