ithout inducing mistrust, was employed in supplying him
with whatever was needful to his condition. On the part of the
commanding officer, the usual precautions known to military experience
for the safe keeping of a prisoner were adopted. The privates of the
guard occupied the barn, whilst Macdonald and one or two subordinate
officers took up their quarters in the dwelling-house: sentinels were
posted at the several avenues leading to the habitation, and a sergeant
had the especial care of the prisoner, who, under this supervision, was
occasionally allowed the range of the garden. The usual forms of a camp
police were observed with scrupulous exactness;--and the morning and the
nightly drum, the parade, the changing of sentries, the ringing of
ramrods in the empty barrels of the muskets, and the glitter of weapons,
were strangely and curiously associated with the rural and unwarlike
features of the scenery around.

CHAPTER XXXI.

BUTLER FINDS A GLEAM OF SUNSHINE IN HIS DISTRESS.

Allen Musgrove had heard enough of Butler's history from his daughter
and from Galbraith Robinson, to feel a warm interest in that officer's
safety; and now his personal acquaintance with the prisoner still
further corroborated his first prepossessions. The old man took the
earliest opportunity to indicate to Butler the concern he felt in his
welfare. From the moderate and kindly tone of his own character, he was
enabled to do this without drawing upon himself the distrust of the
officer of the guard. His expressions of sympathy were regarded, by
Macdonald, as the natural sentiments of a religious mind imbued with an
habitual compassion for the sufferings of a fellow creature, and of one
who strove to discharge the duties of a peace-maker. His visits were
looked upon as those of a spiritual counsellor, whose peculiar right it
was to administer consolation to the afflicted, in whatever condition;
he was therefore permitted freely to commune with the prisoner, and, as
it sometimes happened, alone with him in his chamber.

This privilege was now particularly useful; for Mary having, on the
morning after her midnight interview with John Ramsay and Robinson,
communicated to her father the incidents of that meeting, and put in his
possession the letter which the sergeant had given her, and having also
repeated her message to him accurately as she had received it, Musgrove
took occasion, during the following day, to deliver the letter to
B