"His aspect was fierce but weary; his hunting shirt was torn and bore traces of blood. His story was brief. They had been attacked by Indians in a deep gulley some miles distant, in the grey dawn of the morning; Treherne had been killed and the lady carried off! The Indian showed his wounds, and then claimed his reward.
"Poor Halkett, on hearing of this catastrophe, fell, as if struck by a ball, and was laid on the hard bed of planks whereon the soldiers slept. He was in a delirium, yet passive and weak as a child.
"So the hostile Indians were in our neighbourhood! I thought with horror of what the poor girl—on the eve of becoming a mother—might suffer at their merciless hands; and all her delicate beauty, her merry laugh, the singular combination of elegance and espièglerie in her manner, came vividly back to memory, as I had seen her last, happy, radiant, and smiling, amid the glare and glitter of a garrison ball in the city of Montreal.
"I questioned the Delaware closely; but his story was simple and unvarying, so he received food, rum, and the reward which Halkett had promised.
"An irrepressible anxiety stole over me as night deepened, so taking my servant's musket and bayonet, I primed, loaded, and fixed a new flint with care; and proceeding to the distance of fifty yards in front of my line of sentinels, on the open space where the prairie grass grew thick and rank, I resolved to pass some hours there as an advanced sentinel.
"The sky was dark and cloudy, the stars were obscured by vapour, the silence was intense, and it smote upon my heart with a sense that was in some degree appalling, though I knew that my sentinels and the rest of the picquet were all within hail. The tall prairie grass waved solemnly and noiselessly to and fro; the sombre forest beyond, with the myriad cones of its black pines stretched far away to the distant mountains, but not a sound came from thence, nor from the lone shores of the vast lake of Champlain, whose vista receded away for miles upon my right. Even if the night-herons were wading among its waters I could not hear them, and the whistle of the cat-bird was silent.
"Through the dark, I could see where the wild sumach, with its white blossoms and scarlet berries, waved over the graves of those who had perished on this fatal out-post. Their aspect was solemnizing in such a dark and silent hour, and the familiar faces of the dead men seemed to hover before me. But there was something mysterious and unaccountable in the total disappearance of those whose blood we had only traced upon the grass of the prairie.
"Around where I stood this grass was more than a yard in height and thick as ripened corn. It was waving steadily to and fro as the breath of the night wind agitated it.
"I had been in that solitary place about two hours, and midnight was at hand, when an emotion like a thrill—a tremor, not of fear, but of warning—a 'grue,' as we Scots call it, came over me. I felt the approach of some unseen thing, and cast a hurried glance around me. Something unusual about the appearance of the prairie-grass caught my eye.
"Where, when hitherto I had looked in a direct line to the front, the surface, while swaying to and fro, seemed a flat and unbroken mass, there was now visible a dark line, a hollow furrow, as if some animal was crawling slowly and stealthily through it.