"
"Poor, poor Charles!" bitterly exclaimed Sir Everard
Valletort--for it was he. "What would I not give to recal
the rude manner in which I spurned you from me last night.
But, alas! what could I do, laden with such a trust, and
pursued, without the power of defence, by such an enemy?
Little, indeed, did I imagine what was so speedily to be
your doom! Blessington," he pursued, with increased
emotion, "it grieves me to wretchedness to think that
he, whom I loved as though he had been my twin brother,
should have perished with his last thoughts, perhaps,
lingering on the seeming unkindness with which I had
greeted him after so anxious an absence."
"Nay, if there be blame, it must attach to me," sorrowfully
observed Captain Blessington. "Had Erskine and myself
not retired before the savage, as we did, our unfortunate
friend would in all probability have been alive at this
very hour. But in our anxiety to draw the former into
the ambuscade we had prepared for him, we utterly overlooked
that Charles was not retreating with us."
"How happened it," demanded Sir Everard, his attention
naturally directed to the subject by the preceding remarks,
"that you lay thus in ambuscade, when the object of the
expedition, as solicited by Frederick de Haldimar, was
an attempt to reach us in the encampment of the Indians?"
"It certainly was under that impression we left the fort;
but, on coming to the spot where the friendly Indian lay
waiting to conduct us, he proposed the plan we subsequently
adopted as the most likely, not only to secure the escape
of the prisoners, whom he pledged himself to liberate,
but to defend ourselves with advantage against Wacousta
and the immediate guard set over them, should they follow
in pursuit.
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