"O, Mackellar," said he, "my heart is wae!"

"Wae?" cried I. "For a good cause, I think. What words were these you
sang as you came in? Show pity to others, we then can talk of pity to
yourself. You can be the one thing or the other, but I will be no party
to half-way houses. If you're a striker, strike, and if you're a
bleater, bleat!"

"Ay!" cries he, with a burst, "that's it--strike! that's talking! Man,
I've stood it all too long. But when they laid a hand upon the child,
when the child's threatened"--his momentary vigour whimpering off--"my
child, my Alexander!"--and he was at his tears again.

I took him by the shoulders and shook him. "Alexander!" said I. "Do you
even think of him? Not you! Look yourself in the face like a brave man,
and you'll find you're but a self-deceiver. The wife, the friend, the
child, they're all equally forgot, and you sunk in a mere bog of
selfishness."

"Mackellar," said he, with a wonderful return to his old manner and
appearance, "you may say what you will of me, but one thing I never
was--I was never selfish."

"I will open your eyes in your despite," said I. "How long have we been
here? and how often have you written to your family? I think this is the
first time you were ever separate: have you written at all? Do they know
if you are dead or living?"

I had caught him here too openly; it braced his better nature; there was
no more weeping, he thanked me very penitently, got to bed, and was soon
fast asleep; and the first thing he did the next morning was to sit
down and begin a letter to my lady: a very tender letter it was too,
though it was never finished. Indeed, all communication with New York
was transacted by myself; and it will be judged I had a thankless task
of it. What to tell my lady, and in what words, and how far to be false
and how far cruel, was a thing that kept me often from my slumber.

All this while, no doubt, my lord waited with growing impatiency for
news of his accomplices. Harris, it is to be thought, had promised a
high degree of expedition; the time was already overpast when word was
to be looked for; and suspense was a very evil counsellor to a man of an
impaired intelligence. My lord's mind throughout this interval dwelled
almost wholly in the Wilderness, following that party with whose deeds
he had so much concern. He continually conjured up their camps and
progresses, the fashion of the country, the perpetration in a thousand
different manne