estness I should scarcely have used had my own life been at stake.
But all my entreaties have been in vain. He is obstinate in the belief
my brother's strange absence, and Donellan's death, are attributable
only to the treason of Halloway. Still there is a hope. A detachment is
to leave the fort within the hour, and Halloway is to accompany them.
It may be, my father intends this measure only with a view to terrify
him into a confession of guilt; and that he deems it politic to make
him undergo all the fearful preliminaries without carrying the sentence
itself into effect."

The unfortunate woman said no more. When she raised her heaving chest
from that of the young officer, her eyes, though red and shrunk to half
their usual size with weeping, were tearless; but on her countenance
there was an expression of wild woe, infinitely more distressing to
behold, in consequence of the almost unnatural check so suddenly
imposed upon her feelings. She tottered, rather than walked, through
the group of officers, who gave way on either hand to let her pass; and
rejecting all assistance from the women who had followed into the room,
and who now, in obedience to another signal from Captain Blessington,
hastened to her support, finally gained the door, and quitted the
apartment.

CHAPTER IX.

The sun was high in the meridian, as the second detachment, commanded
by Colonel de Haldimar in person, issued from the fort of Detroit. It
was that soft and hazy season, peculiar to the bland and beautiful
autumns of Canada, when the golden light of Heaven seems as if
transmitted through a veil of tissue, and all of animate and inanimate
nature, expanding and fructifying beneath its fostering influence,
breathes the most delicious languor and voluptuous repose. It was one
of those still, calm, warm, and genial days, which in those regions
come under the vulgar designation of the Indian summer; a season that
is ever hailed by the Canadian with a satisfaction proportioned to the
extreme sultriness of the summer, and the equally oppressive rigour of
the winter, by which it is immediately preceded and followed. It is
then that Nature, who seems from the creation to have bestowed all of
grandeur and sublimity on the stupendous Americas, looks gladly and
complacently on her work; and, staying the course of parching suns and
desolating frosts, loves to luxuriate for a period in the broad and
teeming bosom of her gigantic offspring. It is then