"How is
this, Frederick?--Where, then, is Captain Baynton? and
how came you here?"
"Alas! Clara, poor Baynton is no more. Even at the moment
when he confided the unconscious burden, preserved at
the peril of his own life, to the arms of Sir Everard
here, he fell beneath the tomahawk of a pursuing savage.
Poor, noble, generous Baynton," he continued, mournfully;
"to him, indeed, Clara, are you indebted for your life;
yet was it purchased at the price of his own."
Again the pained and affectionate girl wept bitterly,
and her brother proceeded:--
"The strange object you saw on the lake, my love, was
nothing more than a canoe disguised with leafy boughs,
in which Sir Everard Valletort and myself, under the
guidance of old Francois of the Fleur de lis, whom you
must recollect, have made the dangerous passage of the
Sinclair in the garb of duck hunters,--which latter we
had only discarded on reaching the schooner, in order to
assume another we conceived better suited to our purpose.
Alas!" and he struck his hand violently against his brow,
"had we made directly for the shore without touching the
vessel at all, there might have been time to save those
we came to apprise of their danger.
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