hich might have the effect of
protecting him from wanton insult or aggression hereafter. To a certain
extent he was at their mercy; and conscious, from what he had seen, of
the unscrupulous character of their minds, every exhibition of the kind
had some weight in his favor.

It was with a lively and excited spirit that he surveyed, from the
moderate eminence on which he stood, the events going on around him.
Though not sufficiently near the parties (and scrupulous not to expose
himself to the chance of being for a moment supposed to be connected
with either of them) to ascertain their various arrangements, from what
had met his observation, he had been enabled to form a very correct
inference as to the general progress of affairs. He had beheld the
proceedings of each array while under cover, and contending with one
another, to much the same advantage as the spectator who surveys the
game in which two persons are at play. He could have pointed out the
mistakes of both in the encounter he had witnessed, and felt assured
that he could have ably and easily amended them. His frame quivered with
the "rapture of the strife," as Attila is said to have called the
excitation of battle; and his blood, with a genuine southern fervor,
rushed to and from his heart with a bounding impulse, as some new
achievement of one side or the other added a fresh interest to, and in
some measure altered the face of, the affair. But when he beheld the new
array, so unexpectedly, yet auspiciously for Munro, make its appearance
upon the field, the excitement of his spirit underwent proportionate
increase; and with deep anxiety, and a sympathy now legitimate with the
assailants, he surveyed the progress of an affray for which his judgment
prepared him to anticipate a most unhappy termination. As the strife
proceeded, he half forgot his precaution, and unconsciously continued,
at every moment, to approach more nearly to the scene of strife. His
heart was now all impulse, his spirit all enthusiasm; and with an
unquiet eye and restless frame, he beheld the silent passage of the
little detachment under the gallant Georgian, up the narrow gorge. At
some distance from the hill, and on an eminence, his position enabled
him to perceive, when the party had made good their advance nearly to
the summit, the impending danger. He saw the threatening cliff, hanging
as it were in mid air above them; and all his sympathies, warmly excited
at length by the fearfulne