pected to see another of the officers of the enemy, charged
with a similar office but the instant he recognized the tall person and
still sturdy though downcast features of his friend, the woodsman, he
started with surprise, and turned to descend from the bastion into the
bosom of the work.

The sounds of other voices, however, caught his attention, and for a
moment caused him to forget his purpose. At the inner angle of the mound
he met the sisters, walking along the parapet, in search, like himself,
of air and relief from confinement. They had not met from that painful
moment when he deserted them on the plain, only to assure their safety.
He had parted from them worn with care, and jaded with fatigue; he now
saw them refreshed and blooming, though timid and anxious. Under such an
inducement it will cause no surprise that the young man lost sight for
a time, of other objects in order to address them. He was, however,
anticipated by the voice of the ingenuous and youthful Alice.

"Ah! thou tyrant! thou recreant knight! he who abandons his damsels
in the very lists," she cried; "here have we been days, nay, ages,
expecting you at our feet, imploring mercy and forgetfulness of your
craven backsliding, or I should rather say, backrunning--for verily you
fled in the manner that no stricken deer, as our worthy friend the scout
would say, could equal!"

"You know that Alice means our thanks and our blessings," added the
graver and more thoughtful Cora. "In truth, we have a little wonder why
you should so rigidly absent yourself from a place where the gratitude
of the daughters might receive the support of a parent's thanks."

"Your father himself could tell you, that, though absent from your
presence, I have not been altogether forgetful of your safety," returned
the young man; "the mastery of yonder village of huts," pointing to the
neighboring entrenched camp, "has been keenly disputed; and he who holds
it is sure to be possessed of this fort, and that which it contains. My
days and nights have all been passed there since we separated, because
I thought that duty called me thither. But," he added, with an air of
chagrin, which he endeavored, though unsuccessfully, to conceal, "had
I been aware that what I then believed a soldier's conduct could be so
construed, shame would have been added to the list of reasons."

"Heyward! Duncan!" exclaimed Alice, bending forward to read his
half-averted countenance, until a lock of