er. Full of these thoughts, he took occasion during the
night, whilst the guard were busy in cooking their venison, and whilst
they thought him and his comrade wrapt in sleep, to whisper to Butler
the resolution he had adopted.

"I will take the first chance to-morrow to make a dash upon these
ragamuffins," he said; "and I shall count it hard if I don't get out of
their claws. Then, rely upon me, I shall keep near you in spite of these
devils. So be prepared, if I once get away, to see me like a witch that
travels on a broomstick or creeps through a keyhole. But whisht! the
drunken vagabonds mustn't hear us talking."

Butler, after due consideration of the sergeant's scheme, thought it,
however perilous, the only chance they had of extricating themselves
from the dangers with which they were beset, and promised the most ready
co-operation; determining also, to let no opportunity slip which might
be improved to his own deliverance. "Your good arm and brave heart,
Galbraith, never stood you in more urgent stead than they may do
to-morrow," was his concluding remark.

When morning broke the light of day fell upon a strange and disordered
scene. The drunken and coarse wretches of the night before, now lessened
in number and strength by common broil and private quarrel, lay
stretched on their beds of leaves. Their motley and ill-assorted weapons
lay around in disarray; drinking cups and empty flasks were scattered
over the trodden grass, the skin and horns of the buck, and disjointed
fragments of raw flesh were seen confusedly cast about beneath the tree,
and a conspicuous object in the scene were the clots of blood and gore,
both of men and beast, that disfigured the soil. Two new-made graves, or
rather mounds, hastily scratched together and imperfectly concealing the
limbs of the dead, prominently placed but a few feet from the ring of
last night's revelry, told of the disasters of the fight at the ford.
The brushwood fire had burned down into a heap of smouldering ashes, and
the pale and sickly features of the wounded trooper were to be discerned
upon a pallet of leaves, hard by the heap of embers, surrounded by the
remnants of bones and roasted meat that had been flung carelessly aside.
In a spot of more apparent comfort, sheltered by an overhanging canopy
of vines and alder, lay Butler stretched upon his cloak, and, close
beside him, the stout frame of Horse Shoe Robinson. In the midst of all
these marks of recent rio