o
solitary instance of the stern severity of your father. Still, I
confess, notwithstanding the rigidity of manner which he seems, on all
occasions, to think so indispensable to the maintenance of authority in
a commanding officer, I never knew him so inclined to find fault as he
is to-night."

"Perhaps," observed Valletort, good humouredly, "his conscience is
rather restless; and he is willing to get rid of it and his spleen
together. I would wager my rifle against the worthless scalp of the
rascal I fired at to-night, that this same stranger, whose asserted
appearance has called us from our comfortable beds, is but the creation
of his disturbed dreams. Indeed, how is it possible any thing formed of
flesh and blood could have escaped us with the vigilant watch that has
been kept on the ramparts? The old gentleman certainly had that
illusion strongly impressed on his mind when he so sapiently spoke of
my firing at a shadow."

"But the gate," interrupted Charles de Haldimar, with something of mild
reproach in his tones,--"you forget, Valletort, the gate was found
unlocked, and that my brother is missing. HE, at least, was flesh and
blood, as you say, and yet he has disappeared. What more probable,
therefore, than that this stranger is at once the cause and the agent
of his abduction?"

"Impossible, Charles," observed Captain Blessington; "Frederick was in
the midst of his guard. How, therefore, could he be conveyed away
without the alarm being given? Numbers only could have succeeded in so
desperate an enterprise; and yet there is no evidence, or even
suspicion, of more than one individual having been here."

"It is a singular affair altogether," returned Sir Everard, musingly.
"Of two things, however, I am satisfied. The first is, that the
stranger, whoever he may be, and if he really has been here, is no
Indian; the second, that he is personally known to the governor, who
has been, or I mistake much, more alarmed at his individual presence
than if Ponteac and his whole band had suddenly broken in upon us. Did
you remark his emotion, when I dwelt on the peculiar character of
personal triumph and revenge which the cry of the lurking villain
outside seemed to express? and did you notice the eagerness with which
he enquired if I thought I had hit him? Depend upon it, there is more
in all this than is dreamt of in our philosophy."

"And it was your undisguised perception of that emotion," remarked
Captain Blessington