Scots Generals . . . . . . 29
Scots Colonels . . . . . . 39
Scots Lieut.-Colonels . . 81
Scots Majors . . . . . . . 61
Scots Admirals . . . . . . 7
Scots Captains . . . . . . 81
Scots Masters . . . . . . 33
Scots Lieutenants . . . . 271
Scots Surgeons . . . . . . 144
Montgomery's Highlanders consisted of thirteen companies, making a total of 1460 men, including 65 sergeants who were armed with Lochaber axes, and 30 pipers armed with target and claymore.
Once more among his comrades, the spirit of Charters rose again; a hundred kindly old regimental sympathies were awakened in his breast, and, though the keen regret of his recent parting was fresh in his memory, yet in the conversation of Alaster Mackenzie (who shared his confidence), and in his military duty, he found a relief from bitterness—a refuge which was denied to poor Emmy, who was left to the solitude of her own thoughts and the bitter solace of her own tears, amid those familiar scenes which only conduced to add poignancy to her grief, and served hourly to recal some memory of the absent, and those hours of love and pleasure that had fled, perhaps never to return.
Meanwhile, Charters had not a thought or hope, desire or aim, but to do his duty nobly in the field, to obtain promotion, and to return to wed Emmy. A year—two years—yea, even three, though an eternity to a lover, would soon pass amid the bustle and excitement of war and of foreign service. Three years at most, then, would find him again at the side of Emmy, hand in hand as of old. But, alas I as poor Robert Burns says pithily—
"The best-laid schemes of mice and men
Gang aft ajee."
Though, our lovers had resolved that nothing should exceed the regularity of their correspondence, and that the largest sheets of foolscap should be duly filled with all they could wish each other to say, in those days when regular mails, steamers, telegraphs, and penny postage were yet concealed in Time's capacious wallet, neither Emmy nor Charters had quite calculated upon the devious routes or the strange and wild districts into which the troops were to penetrate, or the chances of the Western war, with all its alternate glories and disasters.
After a lapse of two long and weary months, by a sailing vessel poor Emmy received a letter from Louis, and, in the hushed silence of her own apartment, the humbled coquette wept over every word of it—and read it again and again—for it seemed to come like the beloved voice of the writer from a vast distance and from that land of danger. Then when she looked at the date and saw that it was a month—a whole month—ago, and when she thought of the new terrors each day brought forth, she trembled and her heart grew sick; then a paroxysm of tears was her only relief, for she was a creature of a nervous and highly excitable temperament.
It described the long and dreary voyage to America in the crowded and comfortless transport—one thought ever in his soul—the thought of her; one scene ever around him—sea and sky. It detailed the hurried disembarkation and forced march of General Forbes's little army of 6200 soldiers from Philadelphia in the beginning of July, through a vast tract of country, little known to civilized men; all but impenetrable or impassable, as the roads were mere war paths, that lay through dense untrodden forests or deep morasses and over lofty mountains, where wild, active, and ferocious Indians, by musket, tomahawk, scalping-knife, and poisoned arrow, co-operated with the French in harassing our troops at every rood of the way. He told how many of the strongest and healthiest of Montgomery's Highlanders perished amid the toils and horrors they encountered; but how still he bore up, animated by the memory of her, by that love which was a second life to him, and by the darling hope that, with God's help, he would survive the campaign and all its miseries, and would find himself again, as of old, seated by the side of his beloved Emmy, with her cheek on his shoulder and her dear little hand clasped in his. He sent her some Indian beads, a few forget-me-nots that grew amid the grass within his tent; he sent her another lock of his hair, and prayed kind God to bless for the sake of the poor absent heart that loved her so well.
And here ended this sorrowful letter, which was dated from the camp of the Scottish Brigadier, who halted at Raystown, ninety miles on the march from Fort du Quesne. Thus, by the time Emmy received it, the fort must have been attacked and lost or won.
"Attacked!"—How breathlessly and with what protracted agony did she long for intelligence—for another letter or for the War-office lists! But days, weeks, months rolled on; the snow descended on the Highland mountains; the woods of Kinnoull were again leafless; again the broad Inches of Perth wore the white mantle of winter; the Tay was frozen hard as flint between its banks and between the piers of the old wooden bridge; there now came no mails from America; no letter reached her; and poor Emmy, though surrounded by admirers as of old, felt all the misery of that deferred hope which "maketh the heart sick."
Meanwhile Louis, at the head of his company of Montgomery's Highlanders, accompanied the force of Brigadier Forbes, who, in September, despatched from Raystown Colonel Bouquet to a place called Loyal Henning, to reconnoitre the approach to Fort du Quesne. The colonel's force consisted of 2000 men; of these he despatched in advance 500 Provincials and 400 of Montgomery's regiment, under Major James Grant of Ballindalloch, whose second in command was Captain Charters. Despite the advice of the latter, Grant, a brave but reckless and imprudent officer, advanced boldly towards Fort du Quesne with all his pipes playing and drums beating, as if he was approaching a friendly town. Now the French officer who commanded in the fort was a determined fellow. He it was who had behaved with such heroism at the recent siege of Savannah, where he had been sergeant-major of Dillon's Regiment of the Irish Brigade in the service of King Louis. When the Comte d'Estaing madly proposed to take the fortress by a coup-de-main, M. le Comte Dillon, anxious to signalize his Irishmen, proposed a reward of a hundred guineas to the first grenadier who should plant a fascine in the fosse, which was swept by the whole fire of the garrison; but his purse was proffered in vain, for not an Irishman would advance. Confounded by this, Dillon was upbraiding them with cowardice, when the sergeant-major said—
"Monsieur le Comte, had you not held out a sum of money as an incentive, your grenadiers would one and all have rushed to the assault!"
The count put his purse in his pocket.
"Forward!" cried he—forward went the Irish grenadiers, and out of 194 who composed the company, 104 left their bodies in the breach.
But to resume: the moment the soldiers of Grant were within range, the French cannon opened upon them, and under cover of this fire, the infantry made a furious sortie.
"Sling your muskets! Dirk and claymore!" cried the major as the foe came on. A terrible conflict ensued, the Highlanders fighting with their swords and daggers, and the Provincials with their fixed bayonets; the French gave way, but, unable to reach the fort, they dispersed and sought shelter in the vast forest which spread in every direction round it. Here they were joined by a strong body of Indians, and returning, from amid the leafy jungles and dense foliage they opened a murderous fire upon Major Grant's detachment, which had halted to refresh, when suddenly summoned to arms.
A yell pierced the sky! It was the Indian warwhoop, startling the green leaves of that lone American forest, and waking the echoes of the distant hills that overlook the plain of the Alleghany; thousands of Red Indian warriors, horrible in their native ugliness, their streaky war paint, jangling moccassins and tufted feathers, naked and muscular, savage as tigers and supple as eels, with their barbed spears, scalping-knives, tomahawks, and French muskets, burst like a living flood upon the soldiers of Ballindalloch. The Provincials immediately endeavoured to form square, but were broken, brained, scalped, and trod under foot, as if-a brigade of horse had swept over them. While, in the old fashion of their native land, the undaunted 77th men endeavoured to meet the foe, foot to foot and hand to hand, with the broadsword, but in vain. Grant ordered them to throw aside their knapsacks, plaids, and coats, and betake themselves to the claymore, and the claymore only. For three hours a desultory and disastrous combat was maintained—every stump and tree, every bush, rock, and stone being battled for with deadly energy, and all the horrors of Indian warfare—yells, whoops, the tomahawk and the knife—were added to those of Europe, and before the remnant of our Highlanders effected an escape, Captains MacDonald and Munro, Lieutenants Alaster, William and Robert Mackenzie, and Colin Campbell, were killed and scalped, with many of their men. Ensign Alaster Grant lost a hand by a poisoned arrow; but of all who fell, Charters most deeply regretted Alaster Mackenzie, his friend and confidant, to save whom, after a shot had pierced his breast, he made a desperate effort and slew three Indians by three consecutive blows; but this succour came too late, and Mackenzie's scalp was torn off before he breathed his last.
"Stand by your colours, comrades, till death!" were his last words. "Farewell, dear Charters—may God protect you for your Emmy's sake—we'll meet again!"
"Again!"
"Yes—again—in heaven!" he answered, and expired with his sword in his hand, like a brave and pious soldier.
The Red men were like incarnate fiends, and, amid groans, yells, prayers, and entreaties, were seen on their knees in frenzy, drinking blood from the spouting veins and bleeding scalps of their victims. The combat was a mere massacre, and seemed as if all hell had burst its gates and held jubilee in that wild forest of the savage West. The Provincials were destroyed. Grant, with nineteen officers, fell into the hands of the French; and of his Highlanders only 150 succeeded in effecting a retreat to Loyal Henning, under the command of Louis Charters, to whose skill, bravery, and energy, they unanimously attributed their escape. Many of their comrades who were captured died under agonies such as Indians, Turks, or devils alone could have devised; and the story of one—Private Allan MacPherson—who escaped a cruel death by pretending that his neck was sword-proof, as related by the Abbé Reynal, and General Stewart of Garth, is well known.
James Grant of Ballindalloch died a general in the army in 1806; but he never forgot the horrors of his rashness at Fort du Quesne, which was abandoned to Brigadier Forbes on the 24th November; by this he was deprived of a revenge, and to win it Charters had volunteered to lead the forlorn hope. Poor General Forbes died on the retreat.
Charters's regiment served next in General Ambent's army at Ticonderoga, at Crown Point, and on the Lake Expedition, where he saved the life of Ensign Grant—now known as Alaster the One-handed—by bearing him off the field when wounded; but during all those desultory and sanguinary operations, he never heard from Emmy, nor did she hear from him. He suffered much; he nearly perished in the snow on one occasion with a whole detachment; he was wounded in the left shoulder on that night of horrors at Ticonderoga, and had a narrow escape from a cannon-ball in the fight with a French ship, when proceeding on the expedition to Dominique under Lord Rollo and Sir James Douglas; but though the ball spared his head, the wind of it raised a large inflamed spot, which gave him great trouble and pain. He was with his corps at the conquest of the Havannah; he was at the capture of Newfoundland with the 46th and the Highlanders of Fraser, and he served with honour in a hundred minor achievements of the brave Highlanders of Montgomery.
Renewed or recruited thrice from the Highland clans, the old 77th covered themselves with glory, and of all the Scottish corps in the King's service, there was none from which the soldiers more nobly and rigidly transmitted to their aged parents in Scotland the savings of their poor pay or the prize money gained by their blood in the Havannah. In one of his (unanswered) letters to Emmy Stuart, Louis says, "I have known some of our poor fellows, my dear girl, who almost starved themselves for this purpose."
One of the majors being killed at the storming of the Moro, his widow, in consideration of his great services, was permitted to sell his commission. Louis was now senior captain, and the regiment knew well that he, having only his pay, was unable to purchase it: but so greatly was he beloved by the soldiers, many of whom, in America, had thrown themselves before the sharp tomahawks and poisoned arrows of the Indians to save him, that they subscribed each Highlander so many days' pay to purchase his majority; and the plunder of the rich Havannah having put these brave souls in good funds, the money was all fairly laid on the drum-head in one hour, when the corps was on evening parade in the citadel of El Fuerte.
Such a noble instance of camaraderie and true soldierly sentiment never occurred in the British service but once before; and then it was also in an old Scottish regiment which had served, I believe, in the wars of Queen Anne, before the amalgamation of the forces of the two kingdoms.*
* See "Advice to Officers." Perth, 1795.
This was the most noble tribute his soldiers could pay to Charters, who was duly gazetted when the regiment was stationed at New York in the summer of 1763, to enjoy a little repose after the toils of the past war.
The services and adventures so briefly glanced at here, had thus spread over a period of five years—to Louis, long and weary years—during which he had never heard of Emmy but once; and now he had no relic of her to remind him of those delightful days of peace and love that had fled apparently for ever. The ring she had given him, warm from her pretty hand, had been torn from his finger by plunderers as he lay wounded and helpless on the ramparts of Fort Loudon, on the confines of far Virginia; her fan was lost when his baggage was taken on the retreat from Fort du Quesne; the locket with her hair had been rent from him, when he was taken prisoner and stripped by the French, in the attack on Martinique. He was changed in appearance too; his hair once black as night was already seamed by many a silvery thread, yet he was only two-and-thirty. His face was gaunt and wan, and bronzed by the Indian sun and keen American frost. His eyes, like the eyes of all inured to facing death and danger, pestilence and the bullet, were fierce at times, and keen and haggard; and when tidings came, or it was mooted at mess, that the war-worn regiment of Montgomery was once again to see the Scottish shore, poor Louis looked wistfully into his glass, and doubted whether Emmy would know him; for between the French and the Cherokees he had acquired somewhat the aspect of a brigand.
Peace was proclaimed at last, and the Government made an offer to the regiment, that such officers and men as might choose to settle in America should have grants of land proportioned to their rank and services. The rest might return to Scotland or volunteer into other corps. A few remained among the colonists, and on the revolt of America in 1775, were the first men to join the standard of George III., who ordered them to be embodied as the 84th or Royal Regiment of Highland Emigrants. The rest—most of whom volunteered to join the Black Watch,—with the band, pipes, and colours, under Louis Charters, embarked at New York, and, full of hope and joy, with three hearty cheers, as their ship cleft the waters of the Hudson and bore through the Narrows, saw the future capital of the western world sink in the distance and disappear astern.
Five years! .....
"Emmy must now be nearly nine-and-twenty!" thought Louis; "in a month from this time I shall see her—shall hear her voice—shall be beside her again, assuring her that I am the same Louis Charters of other days."
But month after month passed away, and six elapsed after the sailing of the transport from New York had been duly notified by the London and the Edinburgh Gazettes, and yet no tidings reached Britain of the missing regiment of Montgomery.
During all these five long years—those sixty months—those one thousand eight hundred and twenty-five days, every one of which had been counted by poor Louis—how fared it with the beautiful Emmy Stuart, who was still the belle of the fair city?
So far as the defective newspapers of those days, when Edinburgh had only three (and those of London seldom came north), supplied intelligence, she had traced the operations of Montgomery's Highlanders in the Canadas, the States, on the Lakes, and in the West Indies, in the despatches of Brigadier Forbes, of Colonel Bouquet, Lord Rollo, and others; she had frequently seen the name of her lover mentioned, as having distinguished himself, and twice as having been left wounded on the field. I need not dwell on her days and nights of sickening sorrow and suspense, which no friendship could alleviate.
Save once, no letter from Louis had ever reached her; yet poor Louis had written many: from among frozen camps and bloody fields—from wet bivouacs, and places such as Emmy's gentle mind could never conceive—had he written to her the outpourings of his heart, believing that in due time Emmy would be gazing fondly on the words his hand had traced, and endeavouring to conjure up the tones in which he would have said all that distance and separation compelled him to commit to paper; but, by a strange fatality, these letters never reached her; yet Emmy, the belle, the coquette, remained true, for she knew the chances of war; and that, until the regiment returned home and he proved false, she could not desert her lover.
But Willy Douglas of the Black Watch, who had been all this time comfortably recruiting about Perth and Dunkeld (thanks to his uncle, the Duke of Douglas), was wont to remind her that the 40th Regiment had been more than forty years abroad,* and the battalion of Montgomery might be quite as long away.
* Fact in 1764.
After three years had passed without letters arriving, Emmy still mourned and loved Louis more than ever; while well-meaning friends, who never thought of consulting the army list, assured her that he was killed; but it availed them nought.
Then five years elapsed, and in all that time there came no letter; yet, when taunted that Louis had forgotten her, she replied as Cleopatra did to Alexis when he advised her to deem her lover cruel, inconstant, and ungrateful:—
"I cannot, if I could; these thoughts were vain;
Faithless, ungrateful, cruel if he be,
I still must love him!"
But time changes all things. A pleasing and sad recollection was now beginning to replace her lively affection for Charters. Tired of worshipping one who had become little more than a beautiful statue, her admirers had disappeared gradually, till the assiduous Douglas alone remained in the position of a tacit and privileged dangler. Willy was an honest-hearted fellow, and with his real love for Emmy there was mingled much of pity for what she suffered on account of his "devilish neglectful rival," as he termed Charters. Emmy had long been insensible to his addresses; but as Douglas, who was very prepossessing, was the nephew of the last Duke of Douglas, and had a handsome fortune, her father frequently, earnestly, and affectionately urged her to accept his proposals; while her mother reminded her that she was past eight-and-twenty now; and added, that in a new and more fortunate attachment—in the love that is supposed to follow marriage—she would forget the sorrows of the past. But Emmy, though knowing that this was all mere sophistry, was about to give a silent acquiescence to their schemes, when, turning over the leaves of an old periodical, one day, in a dreamy and listless mood, her eye fell on the following:—
"A union of fortunes, not a union of hearts, is the thing generally aimed at in marriage, and, by those who esteem themselves prudent people, is thought the only rational view. There is no divine ordinance more frequently disobeyed than that wherein God forbids human sacrifices, for in no other light can most modern marriages be viewed. Brazen images, indeed, are not the objects of their worship; a purer metal is their deity. Every one who reads in ancient history of human sacrifices, exclaims against the horrid practice and trembles at the narrative, though there is scarcely one of the female readers, if she is of a marriageable age, who is not ready to deck her person, like an adorned victim, in the hope of tempting some golden idol to receive a free-will offering."
Emmy thought of Douglas's fortune, and the book fell from her hand.
"No, no," she said with a shudder; "I shall not be the adorned victim offered up to this golden idol;" and from that hour she resolved to decline his addresses.
On the day succeeding this brave resolution came tidings "that the remnant of Montgomery's Highlanders, under the command of Major Louis Charters, had sailed from New York six weeks ago, and were daily expected at Greenock, from whence that gallant corps had sailed for the wars of the Far West in 1758."
Now came Emmy's hour of triumph, and already Louis seemed before her, loving, trusting, and true; and hourly she expected to have, in his own handwriting, assurance of all her heart desired; but, alas! time rolled on—days became weeks—weeks became months, and no tidings reached Britain of the Highlanders of Montgomery.
"The lost regiment" was spoken of from time to time, till even friends, comrades, and relations grew tired of futile surmises, and their unaccountable disappearance became like a tale that is told—or a fragment of old and forgotten intelligence.
For a time a sickening and painful suspense bad been kept alive by occasional reports of pieces of wreck, with red coats and tartan fluttering about them, having been espied in the Atlantic; vessels waterlogged and abandoned were passed by solitary ships, and averred to be the missing transport; craft answering her description had been seen to founder in tempests off the banks of Newfoundland; but after eight months had elapsed nothing was heard of what was emphatically called the lost regiment.
Emmy mourned now for Louis as for one who was dead—one who, after all his toil and valour, suffering and constancy (she felt assured he had been constant), was sleeping in the great ocean that had divided them so long.
Tired of all this, her friends had arrayed her in mourning as for one who was really dead; and to carry out a plan of realizing this conviction, her father had erected in the church of St. John a handsome marble tablet to the memory of Charters; and this cold white slab in memoriam met Emmy's heavy eyes every time she raised them from her prayer-book on Sunday. So at last Louis was dead—she felt convinced of it, and, with a reluctant and foreboding mind, she consented to a marriage with Captain Douglas of the Black Watch—a consent in which she had but one thought, that in making this terrible sacrifice she was only seeking to soothe the anxiety and gratify the solicitations of her mother, who was now well up in the vale of years, and who loved her tenderly.
Emmy was placid and content; but though even cheerful in appearance, she was not happy; for her cheek was ever pale and her soft hazel eyes, with their half-drooping lids, failed to veil a restlessness that seemed to search for something vague and undefined.
They were married. We will pass over the appearance of the bride, her pale beauty, her rich lace, the splendour of all the accessories by which the wealth of her father, of her husband, and the solicitude of her kind friends surrounded her, and come to the crisis in our story—a crisis in which a lamentable fatality seemed to rule the destinies of the chief actors in our little drama.
The minister of St. John's Church had just pronounced the nuptial blessing, and the pale bride was in her mother's arms, while the officers of the Black Watch were crowding round Douglas with their hearty congratulations; a buzz of voices had filled the large withdrawing room, as a hum of gladness succeeded the solemn but impressive monotony of the marriage service, when the sharp rattle of drums and the shrill sound of the fifes ringing in the Southgate of Perth struck upon their ears, and the measured march of feet, mingling with the rising huzzahs of the people, woke the echoes of every close and wynd.
A foreboding smote the heart of Captain Douglas. He sprang to a window and saw the gleam of arms—the glitter of bayonets and Lochaber axes, with the waving of plumed bonnets above the heads of a crowd which poured along the sunny vista of the Southgate; and, as the troops passed, led by a mounted officer whose left arm was in a sling—a bronzed, war-worn, and weatherbeaten band—their tartans were recognised as well as the tattered colours which streamed in ribbons on the wind, and their name went from mouth to mouth:—
"The Lost Regiment—the Highlanders of Montgomery!"
A low cry bunt from Emmy; she threw up her clasped hands, and sank in a dead faint at her mother's feet. All was consternation in the house of Stuart of Tullynairn; and the marriage guests gazed at the passing soldiers, as at some fascinating but unreal pageant—but on they marched, cheering, to the barracks, with drums beating and pipes playing; and now the mounted officer, who had been gazing wistfully at the crowded windows, stoops from his saddle and whispers a few words to another—Alaster the One-handed, now a captain—then he turns his horse, and, dismounting at the door, is heard to ascend the stair; and in another moment, Louis Charters, sallow, thin, and hollow-eyed, by long toil and suffering, his left arm in a sling and his right cheek scarred by a shot, stands amid all these gaily-attired guests in his fighting jacket, the scarlet of which had long since become threadbare and purple.
He immediately approached Emmy, who had now partially recovered and gazed at him, as one might gaze at a spectre, when Douglas threw himself forward with a hand on his sword.
"What is the meaning of all this?" said Louis, who grew ashy pale, and whose voice sank into Emmy's soul; "have you all forgotten me—Louis Charters of Montgomery's Regiment?"
"No," replied Douglas, "but your presence here at such a time is most unfeeling and inopportune."
"Unfeeling and inopportune—I—Miss Stuart—Emmy—"
"Miss Stuart has just been made my wedded wife; thus any remarks you have to make, sir, you will please address to me."
Louis started as if a scorpion had stung him, and his trembling hand sought the hilt of his sword; here the old minister addressed him kindly, imploringly, and the guests crowded between them, but he dashed them all aside and turned from the house, without a word or glance from Emmy. Poor Emmy! dismay had frozen her, and mute despair glared in her haggard yet still beautiful eyes.
"Half an hour earlier and I had saved her and saved myself!" exclaimed Charters, bitterly; "the half-hour I loitered in Strathearn!" for he had halted there to refresh his weary soldiers.
And now to explain this sudden reappearance.
Tempest-tossed and under jurymasts, after long beating against adverse winds, the transport, with the remnant of his regiment, had been driven to 37 and 40 degrees of north latitude, and was stranded on the small isles of Corvo and Flores, two of the most western and detached of the Azores. There they had been lingering among the Portuguese for seven months, unknown to and unheard of by our Government; and it was not until Charters, leaving Alaster Grant in command at Corvo, had visited Angra, the capital of the island, and urged the necessity of having his soldiers transmitted home, that he procured a ship at Ponta del Gada, the largest town of these islands, and sailing with the still reduced remnant of his corps—for many had perished with the foundered transport—he landed at Greenock, from whence he was ordered at once to join the 2nd battalion of the Black Watch, into which his soldiers had volunteered, and which, by a strange fatality, was quartered in Perth—the home of his Emmy, and the place where for five long years he had garnered up his thoughts and dearest hopes.
The reader may imagine the emotions of poor Emmy on finding that her lover lived, and that her heart was thus cruelly wrenched away from all it had treasured and cherished for years. Then, as if to aggravate her sorrow, our battalion marched the next day for foreign service, and Louis again embarked for America, the land of his toil, without relentless fate permitting Emmy to excuse or explain herself.
Douglas left the corps and took his wife to Paris, where he fell in a duel with a Jacobite refugee.
Emmy lived to be a very old woman, but she never smiled again.
Thus were two fond hearts separated for ever.
Three months after Louis landed in America, he died of a broken heart say some; of the marsh fever say others. He was then on the march with a detachment of ours up the Mississippi, a long route of 1500 miles, to take possession of Fort Charters in the Illinois. His friend, a Captain Grant—Alaster the One-handed—performed the last offices for him, and saw him rolled in a blanket, and buried at the foot of a cotton-tree, where the muskets of the Black Watch made the echoes of the vast prairie ring as they poured three farewell volleys over the last home of a brave but lonely heart.
IV.
THE MASSACRE AT FORT WILLIAM HENRY.
When the Black Watch sailed for America, in 1706, to serve under the heroic Wolfe and fight against the Marquis of Montcalm, the lieutenant of the 7th company was Roderick MacGillivray, known in the ranks by his local patronymic, Roderick Ruadh (or the Red) of Glenarrow, a gentleman of the Clan Chattan, who, eleven years before, had been a captain in the army of Prince Charles Edward, and had served throughout the memorable campaign of 1745-6. In his heart Roderick MacGillivray had no love either for the service or sovereign of Britain, whom he considered as the butcher of his countrymen, and the usurper of their crown; but his estate of Glenarrow had been forfeited; he was penniless, and having a young wife to maintain, he was glad to accept a commission in the Royal Highlanders—a favour he procured through the interest of one who has already been mentioned in these pages, Louis Charters, who served at Fort du Quesne, as already related in the legend of the "Lost Regiment."
In those days there were many soldiers in the ranks of our regiment who had served in the army of Prince Charles, and who deemed his father, James VIII., the undoubted sovereign of these realms, by that hereditary right, which, as their Celtic proverb has it, "will face the rocks," and which they deemed as sacred and immutable as if the breath of God had ordained it. Thus they served George II., not because they wavered in their loyalty to their native kings, but because they hated his enemies the French, whom they knew to have betrayed the cause of the clans, and in the hope that a time would yet come when the standard which Tullybardine, the loyal and true, unfurled in Glenfinnan, would again wave over a field in which God would defend the right.
And such thoughts and hopes as these were the theme of many a poor soldier of the Reicudan Dhu, in their tents and bivouacs, on the plains of Flanders, on the Heights of Abraham, and by the vast and then untrodden shores of the American lakes.
Similar thoughts, and the memory of all he had endured at the hands of the victorious party, together with the confiscation of his estate, which had descended to him through twelve generations of martial ancestors, made Roderick MacGillivray a grave and somewhat sombre man. He had fought valiantly in the first line at Culloden, where he was one of the guard, the Leine Chrios (i.e. Shirt of Mail, or Children of the Belt) around the Laird of Dunmacglas,* who led the Macintoshes, and who was next day murdered by the English soldiers, when found all but dead of wounds upon the field, where they dashed out his brains by the butts of their muskets as he lay in the arms of his distracted wife.
* The Fort of the Greyman's Son.
After that day, MacGillivray became a fugitive and outlaw, but was happy enough to be one of those eight brave men who, with MacDonald of Glenaladale—the faithful, the gentle, and the true Glenaladale—watched, guarded, and tended by night and by day the unfortunate Prince Charles in the wild cavern of Coire-gaoth among the beautiful Braes of Glenmorriston. There these starving and outlawed men made a bed of heather for the royal fugitive, and there he slept and lurked in perfect security, though thirty thousand pounds were set upon his head by George II., and though the Saxon drum was heard, where the flames of rapine were seen rising on the vast steeps of Corryarrack.
The memory of those stirring days—this companionship with the son of his exiled King, with Prionse Tearlach Righ nan Ghael, words that were said and promises made, with all that winning charm of manner, for which the princes of the House of Stuart were so remarkable, sank deep in Roderick's heart; and there were times when in his soul he panted for the hour when again the White Rose would shed its bloom upon the wasted Highland hills, when the swift vengeance of the loyal would fall on the faithless clans of the west, and the shrill wild pibroch of the Clan Chattan would ring in fierce triumph above the burial mounds at Culloden.
And so he hoped and thought, and watched and waited, but that new day of battle never came!
His secret aspirations were shared to the full by his young wife, Mary MacDonald, who was a grand-daughter of MacVicIan, the chieftain of Glencoe, the terrible Williamite episode in whoso history can yet make the brow of every Highlander darken. But Mary was gentle and timid; she had seen too much of war and bloodshed, of butchery and terror in her girlhood, during the time that followed Culloden; and though she prayed in her innocent little heart for the restoration of Scotland's exiled kings, it was in peace she would have wished it achieved.
In the ancient fashion of the Highlands, Roderick on the day of their marriage had bestowed on Mary—in addition to the espousal ring—an antique brooch; one of those old marriage gifts which were usually given on such occasions. It had been worn by many matrons of his house, and thus became invested with many deep and endearing memories: association, old tales of the love, the spirit and virtue of the dead, hallowed the gift, for it had shone on many a soft breast that had long since mouldered in the dust. Being circular, it was the mystic emblem of eternity, and bore the crest of the Clan Gillibhreac—a cat, with the significant motto in the old Gaelic letter—
"Touch not the cat without the glove;"
and as her own life Mary prized this old bridal brooch, the dearest gift her husband could bestow upon her.
When MacGillivray joined the regiment, Mary was in her twentieth year. She was pale and more than pretty, having that dazzling white skin for which the women of her clan are said to excel all others in Scotland; but of old the same was said of the Campbells and the Drummonds. Her hair was black; her eyes, deep and quiet, were dark hazel, and her features were unexceptionable. She was neither brilliant nor beautiful, but there was a sweetness and delicacy in her smile and manner that touched and won the hearts of all who knew her. There was a sadness, too, in her air and tone, for the most of her kindred had perished in the Glencoe massacre, or at Culloden. She was thus alone in the world, with none to shield or shelter her but her husband—he who was now beginning a life of war and peril—the savage war and double peril of a campaign in America, a wild and untrodden land of barbarous hordes and mighty forests. She shrank with a terror of the prospect before them, and viewed with dismay the many lesser horrors which surrounded her in a crowded transport of those days.
MacGillivray sailed on board the Mercury, the master of which was James Cooke, afterwards the celebrated navigator.
"Twain of heart and of purpose," husband and wife were to each other all in all; and the Celtic soldiers, who knew their story well, said in their own forcible language, that if the bullet of a Frenchman or the arrow of an Indian brought death to Roderick Ruadh, the daughter of MacVicIan would not survive him long.
Each scarcely knew how deep was the love of the other; for the Scots are not a demonstrative people, and the most powerful emotions of the heart are those which they have been taught, perhaps erroneously, to conceal; but of this negative quality we find less in the more impulsive Celt. The ardour of love had now been succeeded by the affection of marriage, and the sincerity of friendship had replaced the glow of passion; but Roderick's enthusiasm in the estimate of perfect excellence by which he judged his own little wife was only equalled by the standard which she had formed for him. To make her happy was to be himself happy, and it was the study of his life to surround her with such comforts as a camp and barrack or transport afforded upon the pay of a lieutenant of the line in the days of George II. "England," says honest Harry Coverdale, "expects every man to do his duty, and occasionally recompenses him for it with honourable starvation." And such was indeed a subaltern's pay in 1757.
In their new mode of existence all seclusion was destroyed; and amid the whirl of a military life, the hurry of embarkation for foreign service, and in the narrow recess allotted to her in the transport, odious by the odour of tar, tobacco, and bilge water, poor Mary sighed for the hum of the summer bee, and for the free, pure breeze that waved the heather bells in Glencoe, or for her husband's once happy home in Glenarrow, roofless and ruined now, as the flames and the devastators of the ducal butcher had left it.
"We have lost all, Mary," said Roderick, bitterly, as one evening she sat on deck, nestled in his plaid, and whispering of these things and of other times; "all but the name of our fathers have gone to the Campbells of Breadalbane, for they have become the lords of all."
"But a time shall come, Roderick, when these usurpations and another still greater shall end, and then the Clan Donald, the MacGregors, the MacIntyres of Glen O, and the race of MacVicar, like the King, shall enjoy their own again."
"Mhari, laoghe mo chri—Mary, calf of my heart," replied the husband, folding her, with a smile, to his breast; "but this will never be——"
"Until the fatal plaid floats down Loch Fyne," she added, with a smile.
There is a Highland prophecy, that a time is coming when a plaid of many colours shall float down Loch Fyne from the Ara to the Firth of Clyde, and then the eagles from a thousand hills shall assemble, and each take therefrom a piece of his own colour; and this is to be the day of general restoration by the Campbells of all of which they have dispossessed the clans of the west.
Under Colonel Francis Grant of Grant (afterwards a lieutenant-general) the regiment landed in America, where the peculiar garb of the Highlanders astonished the Indians, who, during the march to Albany, "flocked from all quarters to see these strangers, who they believed were of the same extraction as themselves, and therefore received as brothers;" for the long hunting-shirt of the Indians resembled the kilt, as their moccassins did the gartered hose, their striped blanket the shoulder plaid, and they too had round shields and knives, like the target and dirk of the Celt; hence, according to General Stewart, "the Indians were delighted to see a European regiment in a costume so similar to their own."
At this period our officers wore a narrow gold braiding round their jackets, but all epaulettes and lace bad been laid aside to render them less conspicuous to the Canadian riflemen. The sergeants laced their coats with silver, and still carried the terrible tuagh or Lochaber axe, the head of which was fitted for hooking, hewing, or spearing an enemy.
After remaining in quarters at Albany for some months, during the winter and spring of 1757, the Black Watch were exercised in bush-fighting and sharpshooting; and amid the dense copsewood or jungle which covered the western margin of the Hudson, on the rugged, stern, and sterile banks of the Mohawk, among woods of stunted pine, dwarf shrubs, and sedge grass, they soon revived the skill they had attained as hardy hunters, deerstalkers, and deadly shots on their native hills; but when they fairly took the field, their ardour and impatience often lured them within the fire of the more wary and cunning Indians who served the Marquis of Montcalm.
So expert, brave, and active did the soldiers of the Black Watch prove themselves in skirmishing, that when, in the beginning of summer, a plan was formed to reduce Louisbourg, and they joined the army destined for that purpose under Major-General Abercrombie, a detachment of fifty chosen men, under the orders of MacGillivray of Glenarrow, departed to reinforce the little garrison in Fort William Henry, on the southern bank of the beautiful Lake George, a sheet of clear water, which is thirty-three miles long and two miles broad, and which, on its northern quarter, near Ticonderoga (that place of fatal memory to the Royal Highlanders), discharges itself into Lake Champlain. It is surrounded by high mountains of the most romantic beauty.
Here, then, lay a garrison of nearly three thousand British soldiers, commanded by Colonel Munro, a veteran Highland officer of great courage and experience, who had for some time successfully protected the frontier of the English colonies, and by his cannon covered the waters of the lake, the double purpose for which the fort had been built. Before the departure of MacGillivray, a serious malheur had occurred near this place.
Munro having heard that the French advanced guard, composed of regulars and Indians, had reached Ticonderoga, sent Colonel John Parker, with four hundred soldiers, down the lake in bay-boats to beat up their quarters; but three of his boat crews being captured, his design became known to M. Beauchatel, the officer in command. Parker was lured into an ambush, and the most dreadful scene of massacre and scalping ensued. His detachment was literally cut to pieces, only two officers and seventy privates escaping, of the four hundred who left the garrison of Munro.
It was on a beautiful evening when MacGillivray's party of Highlanders, marching from the mountains that look down on Lake Champlain, came suddenly in view of Lake George. They had their muskets slung, and were encumbered by their knapsacks, havresacks, canteens, and blankets, and the live-long day had toiled to reach the fort ere night fell; for to halt in that woody district, teeming as it was with the savage Iroquois of Montcalm, would have been a measure fraught with danger and death. MacGillivray came in rear of his little band, leading by the bridle a stout pony, on the pad of which his wife was mounted, for she was ever the object of his tenderest solicitude. This pony was a sturdy little nag, but the long march from Albany had somewhat impaired its vigour, and now it was beginning to fail when almost at the end of the journey.
With the detachment of MacGillivray were two of his comrades in the late civil war, Alaster MacGregor, from Glengyle, and Ewen Chisholm, one of the faithful men of Glenmorriston, who guarded the Prince in the Coire-gaoth.
The sun was setting, and his gorgeous disc seemed for a time to linger among clouds of saffron, crimson, and purple, that were piled in glowing masses above the wooded hills, some of which were a thousand feet in height, and surrounded the waters and islets of Lake George—named by the Indians of old the Horican, and by the Pilgrim Fathers the Lake of the Sacrament; for, charmed by the limpid purity of the water and the sylvan beauty of the scenery, it had been selected, especially by the Jesuits, as a place for procuring the element of baptism. But now for the old Indian name had been substituted that of his Majesty George II.; while, to awe the Mohawks, the Oneidas, the Tuscaroras, and to keep the French in check, Fort William Henry—named after another prince of the House of Brunswick—had been built, as related, upon the southern margin of the lake.
Like all American forts, it was formed with earthen ramparts, covered by rich green turf, and defended by tall stockades of dry white timber. Within were seen the shingle-covered roofs of the low barrack buildings, tarred and painted black, and all glistening in the sunshine. Two of the lower bastions were faced with stone and washed by the azure water of Lake George, while a deep fosse secured the fort on the landward, and dangerous morasses protected its flanks. Beyond lay a cleared space, where the timber of the old primeval forest had been cut down for garrison purposes. The bayonets of the sentinels flashed like stars on the green ramparts ever and anon, while some thirty or forty lines of steady horizontal light marked where the setting sun shone on the iron guns that peered through the embrasures, or frowned en barbette above the slope of the parapets.
The gaudy Union Jack hung unwaved upon its staff. As evening closed in, masses of vapour ascended from the bosom of the deep blue water, and wreathed like white and golden scarfs about the summits of the mountains, whose tops were mellowed in the distance, and those rocky bluffs that start forward from the wooded slopes, as if to break the harmony of the scenery by a few darker and bolder features. As the last vestige of the sun sank, and its rays alone remained to play upon the clouds above and the ripples of the Horican below, the boom of the evening gun was heard pealing through the wilderness with a hundred solemn reverberations; and as the flag descended from its staff on the fort, a sound on the soft and ambient air came floating up the mountainside.
"The drummers are beating the evening retreat, Mary," said MacGillivray to his wife, who was looking pale and weary; "in half-an-hour we shall be with old Munro."
"Yonder fort is like some place I have seen before," said she, pressing her husband's hand.
"Aye, Lady Glenarrow," responded Ewen Chisholm, coming close with the easy familiarity of a Highlander—a familiarity that is destitute of all assurance; "you are thinking of Fort George, for there are the same palisades and the same fashion of ramparts washed by the waves of the Moray Firth; but oich! oich! we miss green Ard-na-saor."
"And the Black Isle, and the Chanonry-ness, Ewen," added MacGillivray.
"Yes, yes," said Mary, thoughtfully, to the soldiers in their own language; "the land is beautiful; but it is not home. Then what is it to us?"
"Yet," said Ewen, "here is a badge for your bonnet, MacGillivray, and, though of American growth, you cannot despise it."
"Thanks, Ewen," said the officer, with a kindling eye, as he placed the gift in his bonnet.
It was a sprig of the red whortleberry, the badge of those of his name in Scotland, where they are styled the Clann Gillibhreac, "or the Sons of the Freckled Man."
The elm, the ash, the cypress, the chesnut, the pine, and the beech, all mingled their varied foliage above the narrow track or Indian trail the soldiers were pursuing, while a thousand flowers and shrubs, to them unknown, flourished in all the rich luxuriance of this new world into which they were penetrating, and the musk-rat, the racoon, and the fox scampered before them from tree to tree as they proceeded.
"Hark!" exclaimed Alaster MacGregor, a wary old forester, "something on two feet stirs in the bush!"
"Dioul! and see, Alaster, the objects are close enough," added the officer.
At a part of the wood where it became more open by the trees having been cut away, and where the ground shelved abruptly down to the depth of eighty or a hundred feet, they suddenly came in view of two Indians gliding stealthily from stem to stem, as if seeking to elude observation. Their wild and horrid aspect caused the timid wife of MacGillivray to utter a faint cry of terror, while the whole detachment halted simultaneously to observe them, and began instinctively to handle their muskets.
"They are Iroquois," whispered MacGillivray to his sergeant; "I was told that Montcalm had filled all the woods around Lake George with the cursed tribes of that race."
"One of them is carrying something," replied the sergeant, as he shred away by his Lochaber axe a magnificent azalea, the flowers and foliage of which obscured his view.
"It is a child—a poor little child," exclaimed Mary, piteously. "Listen to its cry of despair!"
"The child of a white man, by Heaven!" added MacGillivray. "Come hither you that are the best shots, and bring yonder rascals down; but fire one it a time, lest we needlessly alarm the fort, or, what is worse, bring all the tribes of the Iroquois upon us."
Both these savages were nearly nude. Their skins had the deep and tawny red of their race, but were streaked with war paint. One was daubed over red and blue, and the other who bore the child was striped with white lines, and these glaring upon a background so sombre, gave him the horrible aspect of a walking skeleton. Their heads were closely shaved, or by some other process divested of all hair, save the scalp-lock, in which was tied a tuft of eagles' feathers. Each had the terrible tomahawk and scalping-knife glittering at his gay wampum girdle, and each bore a French musket ornamented with brass rings. One wore over his shoulder the fur of a wild animal; the other had nothing across his bare, brawny chest but the buff belt of a cartridge-box. By their weapons they were at once known to be allies of the Marquis de Montcalm, who with a policy, alike dangerous and ungenerous, had armed the six nations of the Iroquois against the British.
On finding themselves perceived, the savages uttered a wild laugh of derision, and the skeleton—he who bore the child, a poor little boy of some three or four years—waved him thrice round his head, as if with the intention of dashing out his brains against a tree; then, suddenly seeming to change his mind, he deliberately deposited him on the ground, and grasping a handful of the boy's golden hair in his brown fingers, drew his scalping-knife from the tail-piece of a musk-rat, the skin of which formed his hunting-pouch: but now a wild cry of entreaty from Mary MacGillivray made him pause.
"Ewen Chisholm—Alaster, shoot—shoot, at all hazards!" exclaimed her husband.
Ewen knelt down, took a deliberate aim, and then paused, for the Iroquois was also on his knees, and had artfully interposed the child between his person and the soldiers.
"Fire, Ewen, I command you; fire at all hazards!" reiterated MacGillivray, impetuously; "'tis better for the poor child to die by a bullet than by an Indian's knife—a poisoned one, perhaps."
The Iroquois raised his arm for the purpose of giving the knife one vigorous sweep round the scalp of the child, who was frozen with fear; but at that moment Ewen fired. The ball pierced the red skin near the shoulder; with a yell of rage he dropped his weapon, and plunging into the woods disappeared. A shot from the musket of Alaster MacGregor brought down his companion, who though one of his legs was broken, endeavoured to crawl away, but was overtaken by the soldiers, and roughly dragged up the slope to the forest path. The rescued child clung to his preservers, and to the neck of Mary MacGillivray, who placed him on her saddle-bow, and with that motherly tenderness and those caresses which come so naturally from a kind and amiable woman, endeavoured to calm the terrors his late adventure had excited.
With a sudden glare of defiance, the wounded Iroquois surveyed those captors at whose hands he expected immediate immolation.
Several bayonets were directed against him, and more than one musket was clubbed butt-end uppermost to close his career, when Mary interposed and begged that his life might be spared, on which the Highlanders drew back. The glittering eyes of the Iroquois were fixed upon her, and though he knew not the language in which she spoke, he was aware that to her intercession he owed his life, and smiled; for, Indian like, he despised the manhood of men who could be swayed by a woman. Thus he evinced neither surprise nor gratitude, nor even pain, though his wounded limb bled freely, and must have occasioned him exquisite torment. By Mary's desire the limb was bound up, and in a few minutes the astonished savage found himself placed across four muskets, and borne towards the fort, which was now little more than a quarter of a mile distant. From time to time he glanced keenly and sharply into the adjacent thickets, as if expecting a rescue, but none appeared; and on finding himself clear of the forest he doubtless gave himself up for lost.
"We are close to the gates," said MacGillivray to the piper; "play up, Alisdair Bane."
"Bodoich n' m briogois?" suggested the piper, assuming his drones.
The officer assented, and soon the far-stretching dingles of American forest were ringing to the stirring notes of Lord Breadalbane's march, while the tones of the instrument seemed to astonish and excite the terror of the Indian, in front of whom the piper was strutting with that lofty port peculiar to his profession. Considering this to be probably a prelude to his being scalped and slain, the Iroquois smiled disdainfully, remembered that he was a warrior, and relapsed into his previous state of apathetic indifference, resolved that in the death of torment for which he doubted not he was reserved, to perish with the phlegmatic coolness and iron resolution of his race.
These Iroquois were a confederation of tribes, who supported each other in battle in a manner not unlike the sixteen confederated clans known in Scotland as the Clan Chattan. The chief of the Iroquois were the Mohawks, who resided on the Mohawk River and the banks of those lakes which still bear their name, and from thence they extended their conquests beyond the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence, subduing the Eries, the Hurons, the Ottawas and five other tribes, till they became the terror of their enemies by their ferocity and valour; but even these were forced to yield at last to British rule.*
* In the Army List of the 15th September, 1816, will be found among officers having the local rank of Major in Canada, "John Norton, alias Teyoninhakawaren, Captain and leader of the Indians of the Five Nations."
The report of the musket-shots had reached the fort, where the mainguard and a strong inlying piquet were under arms when the Highlanders marched in. They were received by their countryman Colonel Munro, who, to his astonishment and joy, discovered in the little fellow who nestled in the arms of the mounted lady, his own son and only child Eachin (or Hector), who had been abstracted—but how, none could tell—from the gate of the fort by some of the lurking Indians.
The colonel was a brave and veteran officer, who had recently been deprived, by death, of a young wife. She had left him this little boy, and the heart of the soldier was filled with lively gratitude for the rescue of one whom he prized more than life. After pouring out his thanks to MacGillivray, he turned sternly towards the Iroquois. A sudden glow of anger for the narrow escape of the child made him unsheath his sword, with the intention of passing it through the heart of the Indian, to destroy him, as one might slay a reptile or wild animal; but again Mary interposed, saying,—
"For my sake, spare him, Colonel Munro."
"I cannot refuse you anything, madam," replied the old soldier, courteously, lowering the point of his sword; "and I would that you had something of greater value to ask of me than the life of a wretched Iroquois; but it shall be spared—ay, and his wound shall be dressed, if such is your wish."
"Thanks, dear colonel."
"But, bear in mind, madam," continued Munro, pressing his little boy close to his breast, "that were the case reversed and we at the mercy of the Iroquois, even as this tawny villain is at ours, we should be stripped, bound to trees, and put to death by such torments as devils alone could devise. And now, MacGillivray, though doubtless weary with your long march, ere you refresh, tell me (for here amid the wilds of the Horican, we hear nothing but the whoop of the wild Iroquois, the yells of the Mohawks, and, now and then, a rattle of musketry) what news of the war?"
"The Earl of London has marched to besiege Louisbourg!"
"And delayed his attack upon Crown Point?"
"Yes."
"I expected so much. Since the capture of Oswego, the French have remained masters of the lakes, and collecting the Indians, force or lure them, like the Iroquois, to serve King Louis, and thus all our settlements on the Mohawk River and the German Flats have been destroyed and the land laid as waste and desolate as—"
"The Braes of Lochaber after Culloden," said MacGillivray, with a louring eye.
"While here with red coats on us, let us think no more of Culloden," replied Munro in a low voice. "But what news of Montcalm? Our scouts assert he is moving up this way to besiege me."
"At Abercrombie's head-quarters, all say that, elated by recent advantages, Louis de St. Veran, and his second in command, the Baron de Beauchatel, are desirous of attempting something great."
"And that something—"
"Will be the destruction of Fort William Henry, as it covers the frontiers and commands Lake George."
"But does the commander-in-chief expect that I, with only three thousand regulars, will be able to withstand the whole French army?" asked Munro, with a stern and anxious whisper.
"No—General Webb—"
"Old Dan Webb of the 48th?"
"With a column of infantry, was to leave headquarters a day or two after us to succour you, and Fort Edward is to be the base of his operations. Meanwhile, I with my fifty Highland marksmen, pushed on as a species of avant-garde."
"Then both Webb and Montcalm are en route for this locality?"
"'Tis a race, and he who wins may win Fort William Henry."
"In three days a great game shall have been played here, perhaps," said Munro, thoughtfully; "but to God and our own valour we must commit the event; and now, madam, a hundred pardons for leaving you here so long," he added, bowing to Mary, and with that old air of Scoto-French gallantry which Scott has so well portrayed in his "Baron of Bradwardine," he drew the glove from his right hand, and raised his little triangular hat; "permit me to lead you to my quarters until your own are prepared, and wo shall have a cheerful evening's chat about poor old Scotland, and the homes we may never see again. When I first heard the sound of your pipe rising up from the dingles of yonder forest, and saw the tartans waving as your Highlanders marched up the gate, I cannot describe the emotions that filled my heart. The thoughts of home and other times came thronging thick and fast upon my memory—kinsmen and friends, father, mother, and wife—voices and faces of years long passed away, of the loved, the lost, and the dead, were there with the memory of all that the voice of the war-pipe rouses in the heart of an exiled Scotsman; but enough of this! And now, to you, madam, and to you, MacGillivray, as we say in the land of hills and eagles, a hundred thousand welcomes to Fort William Henry!"
The wounded Iroquois was consigned to the temporary hospital of the fort; the newly arrived Highlanders were "told off" (as the phrase is) to their quarters, and in one hour after, when the last roll of the drum at the tattoo had died away, and when the rising moon shone over the wooded mountains on the clear glassy water and green islets of Lake George, all was still in Fort William Henry, and nothing seemed moving but the bayonets flashing back the rays of silver on their tips, as the muffled sentinels trod to and fro upon the palisadoed ramparts.
The fatigue of her journey northwards from Albany to Lake George had proved too much for the delicate wife of MacGillivray, as at this time she was on the eve of adding a little stranger to the number of the garrison, and thus the solicitude of her husband for her health and safety, in a crowded fort, prepared for a desperate siege, and situated in a wild district, now swarming with hostile Indians, became at times alike deep and painful. The issue of the coming strife, none could foretell, and Roderick knew that if aught fatal happened to him, Mary and her babe—the babe he might not be spared to see—would be alone, in this far world of the west, exposed to penury, to perils and horrors, which his mind could neither contemplate nor conceive.
The first and second day after their arrival passed without any alarm.
On the third, Mary visited the wounded Indian, and gave him some little comforts prepared by her own hands. His limb had been simply fractured, and the wound, which was not so severe as had been at first supposed, was now healing rapidly. He received her with a bright smile of recognition—perhaps of gratitude, for he remembered that she had twice saved his life—first from the bayonets of the Highlanders, and secondly from the sword of Colonel Munro. His features were rather regular and handsome, and save for their deep tawny tint and strong lines, not unlike those of many Europeans. He received her presents, and then relapsed into moody and sullen silence; but Mary, whose tender nature felt pity for the poor Indian who was deemed and treated little better than a dog by those around him, had learned some of the native language from an old Ottawa woman who had acted as her servant in Albany; and now she made an effort to address the savage in that singular mixture of Canadian-French, English, and Indian, which formed the usual medium of communication with the natives. She asked his name.
"Orono," he replied in a husky voice, while his eyes brightened, and a red deeper even than the warpaint and the glass beads he wore, spread under his tawny skin.
"And he who accompanied you?"
"Ossong, a Mohawk warrior, and a brave one! Before the door of his wigwam a hundred scalps of the Yengees are drying in the wind."
Mary uttered a faint exclamation of horror, but the savage smiled, and said—
"Are no men ever killed in your country?"
"And what meant you to do with the child?"
The stealthy and cunning eyes of Orono lowered for a moment; then, as a gleam of unutterable ferocity spread over his striped visage, he answered—
"To have kept him till we could get the grey scalp of the white chief his father."
"And then——"
"We would have given him to an old pawaw, as a son, to replace one slain by the white chief two moons ago; but I will pardon him all wrong for the sake of you, the pale-face who have been so kind to me."
As he said this the Indian took the tiny white hand of Mary in his strong brown muscular fingers, and attempted to place it on his bare head near the scalp-lock, in token of amity and future service; but she shrank bock in terror and with a repugnance which she could not repress, and once more the malevolent gleam which always filled her with dread, shone in the glittering eyes of the Red Indian.
"Have you a wife, Orono?" she asked, to conciliate him.
"Orono had a wife," replied the Indian, sadly; "a girl of the Oneidas, and he had two little children for whom she boiled the rice and maize, and wove bright belts of wampum. Orono had a mother too, who shared his wigwam by the sunny bank of the Horican; but three moons ago the red warriors came, his wigwam was burned, his cattle taken, the trees were cut down, and the mother, the squaw, and the children of Orono were all destroyed, as we would destroy the big snakes in the reeds or the otter in the swamps. And they slew his father—an aged warrior, a man of many moons, and many, many days, who remembered when first the great fire-spouting canoes of the Yengees, with their huge white sails, came over the salt lake from beyond the rising sun; but they slew him also—all, all! Father, mother, squaw, and papoose—cattle and dog; nothing was left but a little heap of cinders to mark where the wigwam stood: all were gone, like the flowers of last summer—gone to the happy hunting grounds of the Iroquois," he added, pointing westward.
"And poor Orono is left quite alone!" said Mary, patting his shoulder kindly, for the story of the Indian impressed her by its resemblance to the fate of her own family in Glencoe, and to many an episode of murder and outrage after Culloden; "alone," she added, "in this great selfish world!"
"To revenge them; and for this I have trod on the pipe of peace and dug up the war-hatchet!" he replied in a voice like the hiss of a snake, while his eyes glared like two red carbuncles in the dusk of the evening, as Mary retired in dismay.
Ere the night was finally set in her tender sympathies for her new friend received a severe shock. To her husband, who had just returned from a reconnoitring expedition, she was relating her interview with Orono, when the sharp report of two muskets echoed among the logwood edifices which formed the barracks of the fort. Mary grew deadly pale, and clung to Roderick.
"The French!" was his first thought, as he broke away, snatched his claymore, and hurried to the barrack-square, where he heard that a soldier of the Royal American Regiment had been assassinated.
Orono the Indian had abstracted a knife from the basket of his late unsuspecting visitor, and springing unseen upon the sentinel at the hospital door had slain him, swept the blade once round his head above the cars, and torn away his scalp. Then though weak and wounded, with his knife in one hand, and the ghastly trophy reeking in the other, he had bounded over the palisades like an evil spirit, glided through the wet ditch like an eel, and, escaping the musket-shots of two sentinels on the summit of the glacis, reached the darkening forest, where all trace of him was instantly lost in the thickness of the foliage and the gloom of a moonless evening.
"And so, dear Mary, with this terrible episode closes your little romance," said MacGillivray, with a kind smile, as he put an arm round her.
"I devoutly hope so," said she, shuddering, and feeling, she knew not why, a horrible impression that she would yet see more of this Indian, whose lithe but herculean form, sternly sombre face, glittering eyes, and scalp-lock were ever before her.
"The black traitor, to reward our kindness thus! 'Tis a thousand pities, dearest, you saved him from our men on the march, and from old Munro's sword in the fort; for these wretches are no better than wild beasts. Thus it matters little whether wo kill them now or a month hence."
"Oh, Roderick!" exclaimed Mary, with her hazel eyes full of tears; "how can you talk thus?"
"Why?"
"For so said King William's warrant to massacre my people in Glencoe; and so said that order which was written on the night before Culloden."
"True, true; the poor Indian only fights for the land God gave his fathers, even as ours, Mary, was given to the children of the Gael," replied Roderick, as the usual current of his bitter thoughts returned; "and a time there was Mary (God keep thee from harm!) when I little thought to find myself so far from my father's grave, wearing the black cockade of the Hanoverian in my bonnet, and the red uniform of those men who trampled on the white rose at Culloden, and murdered the aged men, the women, and the little ones of your race, under cloud of night, at the behest of a bloodthirsty Dutchman!"
"Still speaking of Glencoe and Culloden!" said Colonel Munro, joining them, as they sat on the bastion, at the base of which rippled the waters of Lake George, then flushed red with the last light of sunset.
"Yes, Munro; I am thinking of the time when the kilt alone was seen upon the Highland mountains, and when the breeches of the Lowlander—the brat-galla (i.e. foreigner's rag)—were unknown among us."
"Let us have no more of these sour memories, and if my fair friend will favour me with that song which she sang to my little boy last evening, it may lighten the tedium of a time which to me, after being caged up here for six months, seems insufferably weary."
Mary coloured, and glanced round timidly, for several officers of the garrison who had been lounging on the parapets drew near, and she knew few songs save those of her native hills, and consequently they were in a language totally unintelligible to the gentlemen of the Royal Americans and Parker's Foot; but on being pressed by the colonel and his little one, who nestled at her feet, she sang the only English song with which she was acquainted. It was a paraphrase of one of the psalms,* and was then a favourite with the Jacobites, who sang it to a beautiful and plaintive old Highland air.
* Psalm cxxxvii.
On Gallia's shore we sat and wept,
When Scotland we thought on.
Robbed of her bravest sons, and all
Her ancient spirit gone!
"Revenge!" the sons of Gallia said,
"Revenge your wasted land;
Already your insulting foes
Crowd the Batavian strand!
"How shall the sons of Freedom e'er
For foreign conquest fight?
For power how wield the sword, deprived
Of liberty and right?
"If thee, O Scotland! we forget,
Even to our latest breath,
May foul dishonour stain our name,
And bring a coward's death.
"May sad remorse for fancied guilt
Our future days employ,
If all thy sacred rights are not
Above our ohiefest joy.
"And thou, proud Gaul, O faithless friend,
Thy ruin is not far;
May God, on thy devoted head,
Pour all the woes of war!
"When thou, thy slaughtered little ones,
And outraged dames shalt see;
Such help, such pity mayest thou have,
As Scotland had from thee!"
* * * *
As Mary sang, many loiterers of the Black Watch had joined the little group around her, and listened as if turned to stone. The veteran colonel of the Royal Americans, who had been long, long from the land of his birth, felt his grave iron nature melted. He sat on the parapet of the gun-battery, with his chin placed in his right hand, and his left nervously grasping the hilt of his sword. His keen grey eyes, which roved uneasily from one object to another, began at last to moisten and fill, and then tears ran down the furrows of his cheeks—old dry channels worn by war and time, but all unused to such visitors.