erto escaped their attention.

"See, sir, they are collecting in great force near the gate,"
observed the lieutenant--"I can distinctly see Pee-to-tum, who has
joined them, motioning with his hand to advance."

"Then is this the best position we could have chosen," returned
Captain Headley; "courage, men! A taste of biscuit from your
haversacks while you have time, a teaspoonful of rum, and then we
must at it again. Mind, above all things, that you keep cool, and
do not fire a shot without orders."

From the moment that Ronayne had placed himself, with the colors,
at the head of the little party when advancing up the sandhill, he
had not spoken a word, but continued to gaze fixedly and abstractedly
upon that part of the plain or prairie which led to the inner
encampment of the Indians. His whole thought--his undivided
attention was given to his wife, whose anxiety, nay, anguish, at
hearing the sounds of conflict which denoted his imminent peril,
he knew must be intense. True, he himself was spared the anxiety
and uncertainty which filled the breasts of his comrades on seeing
those they loved best on earth exposed to all the fearful chance
of battle, but even in that there was an excitement which in some
degree compensated for the risks they ran. The very fact of their
presence had sustained them; but now that the final result seemed
no longer doubtful, and that the annihilation of the whole party
was to be momentarily expected, he felt that one last look, one
last embrace of her he loved, would rob death of half its horrors.
But this was but the momentary selfishness of the man. When Mrs.
Headley and Mrs. Elmsley were known to have disappeared, he more
than ever rejoiced in the circumstances which had removed his
beloved wife from the horrors of the day, and placed her under so
faithful a guardianship as that of the generous Wau-nan-gee.

But there was another reason for the calm, the serious silence
which the Virginian had preserved. Independently of the aching
interest he took in all that he supposed to be passing at that
moment in the mind of his absent wife, he had been deeply galled
by the last insulting remark of Captain Headley, to which he had,
it is true, replied in a similar spirit, yet which nevertheless
had continued to give him much annoyance. His duty as bearer of
the colors being rather passive than active, he had not found it
necessary to open his lips, except to utter a few words of
encouragement