intrigue with that dark-eyed
daughter of the old Canadian would have been the means of throwing your
companion so speedily into my power, after his first narrow escape.
Your disguise was well managed, I confess; and but that there is an
instinct about me, enabling me to discover a De Haldimar, as a hound
does the deer, by scent, you might have succeeded in passing for what
you appeared. But" (and his tone suddenly changed its irony for
fierceness) "to the point, sir. That you are the lover of this girl I
clearly perceive, and death were preferable to a life embittered by the
recollection that she whom we love reposes in the arms of another. No
such kindness is meant you, however. To-morrow you shall return to the
fort; and, when there, you may tell your colonel, that, in exchange for
a certain miniature and letters, which, in the hurry of departure, I
dropped in his apartment, some ten days since, Sir Reginald Morton, the
outlaw, has taken his daughter Clara to wife, but without the
solemnisation of those tedious forms that bound himself in accursed
union with her mother. Oh! what would I not give," he continued,
bitterly, "to witness the pang inflicted on his false heart, when first
the damning truth arrests his ear. Never did I know the triumph of my
power until now; for what revenge can be half so sweet as that which
attains a loathed enemy through the dishonour of his child? But, hark!
what mean those sounds?"

A loud yelling was now heard at some distance in rear of the tent.
Presently the bounding of many feet on the turf was distinguishable;
and then, at intervals, the peculiar cry that announces the escape of a
prisoner. Wacousta started to his feet, and fiercely grasping his
tomahawk, advanced to the front of the tent, where he seemed to listen
for a moment attentively, as if endeavouring to catch the direction of
the pursuit.

"Ha! by Heaven!" he exclaimed, "there must be treachery in this, or yon
slippery captain would not so soon be at his flight again, bound as I
had bound him." Then uttering a deafening yell, and rushing past Sir
Everard, near whom he paused an instant, as if undecided whether he
should not first dispose of him, as a precautionary measure, he flew
with the speed of an antelope in the direction in which he was guided
by the gradually receding sounds.

"The knife, Miss de Haldimar," exclaimed Sir Everard, after a few
moments of breathless and intense anxiety. "See, there is one in the
b