be patient, and be gone. I have not forgotten my promise." Wolfe again looked with respectful interest on the lady, and glided from the chapel, followed by Slattery. "Chaunette must be your guide to the mountain road," said the man. 66 You may reach your quarters before day if your legs fail not; and if your first service is to make me repent my trustremember, though all the red-coats in Ireland formed a triple wall around you, I will whisk you from the middle of them, and never a one the wiser!" "I must see to that," replied the young man haughtily. "Be assured no fear of personal safety, much less your threats, shall ever make me shrink from my duty. Return to your bride, and make a better husband than you have done a subject. I shall ferry myself across, and make my own way. My papers you say are safe ?” "Unless some of the boys took a fancy to light his pipe with a five-hundred pound bill," replied Slattery, in a tone which made Wolfe think that the sooner they parted the pleasanter would be the farewell. Wolfe leaped into one of the two small chaloupes that lay moored in an indenture of the rocks which formed a sort of natural dock; and sculled along under the shadow of the edifice. The stripe of water which, as the tide rose, girdled the castle like a moat, was not above eighty yards in breadth. It was on the land side that he thought it prudent to wait the arrival of his fair guide, who, with swiftness and silence, led him to the mountain gorge, through which wound a wild bridle road. Next day by noon, Grahamė, in his barrack-room bed, was surrounded by his brother officers, congratulating him on his escape, and listening to such particulars of his adventure as he thought fit to communicate. He rose and wrote letters to his home,―a brief one to his uncle, which he forthwith despatched, and a long, rambling, heart-full history to Elizabeth, which he locked into his desk to be concluded when he had accomplished the adventure in which he was about to engage. An interview with the commanding officer, which he had written to solicit, was granted immediately; and three hours after dark he was seen to leave the town, accompanied by a sergeant and a party of foot soldiers, on some secret expedition into the country. Next morning this party returned, fatigued and in very ill humour, from an ambuscade into which they had fallen, when left by Captain Grahame near the Bridge over the Pass, and from which they had with difficulty extricated themselves. But he never returned, and the parties sent out in pursuit of him ever came back disappointed. Many of the officers volunteered on this service, but their efforts were attended with no better success. Public and private rewards, and a day's pay subscribed by the whole regiment for the discovery of a popular officer, were often claimed but never gained. When Grahame had thus mysteriously disappeared for about a month, his barrack was broken into, and robbed of his papers and clothes, a few of his books, and the bugle which was become his favourite instrument, as well as all the letters which had been addressed to him in this interval. Another light was thrown on the affair by the discovery of the assistance which he had given to the fugitive traitor O'Connor. And now the regimental mess was divided into violent factions; the English gentlemen belonging to it openly condemning, the Scottish officers as stoutly defending the absent party-though even the latter began to wish that if alive he would appear, and clear himself from these dishonourable imputations. When another month had elapsed a fresh commotion arose, from the circumstance of a woman in a red cloak coming, in violent haste, to the post-office of the little town in which the regiment was quartered, and claiming all letters lately addressed to Captain Grahame, who, she said, had just escaped from the rebels and returned to head-quarters. She succeeded in her errand, and was clear off before the postmaster, suspecting the fraud, had raised the hue and cry among the soldiers. END OF VOLUME SECOND. EDINBURGH: 1 |