"But why his departure, and whence your consternation?"

asked Gerald, whose curiosity had been deeply excited.

"I was not alone," resumed Matilda, in a deep and solemn voice. "When he entered I was hanging on the neck of another."

Gerald gave a half start of dismay, his arm dropped from the waist of the American, and he breathed heavily and quickly.

Matilda remarked the movement, and a sickly and half scornful smile pa.s.sed over her pale features. "Before we last parted, Gerald, I told you, not only that I was in no way connected with Major Montgomerie by blood, but that I was the child of obscure parents."

"What then?"

"The man on whose neck I hung was my own father."

"It was Desborough!" said the youth, with an air and in a voice of extreme anguish.

"It was," returned Matilda, her face crimsoning as she reluctantly acknowledged the parentage. "But how knew you it?"

"Behold the proof," exclaimed Gerald, with uncontrollable bitterness, as he drew from his bosom the portrait of a child which, from its striking resemblance, could be taken for no other than her to whom he now presented it.

"This is indeed mine," said Matilda, mournfully. "It was taken for me, as I have since understood, in the very year when I was laid an orphan and a stranger at the door of that good man, who calling himself my uncle, has been to me through life a more than father. Thank G.o.d," she pursued with greater animation, her large dark eyes upturned, and sparkling through the tears that forced themselves upwards, "thank, G.o.d he at least lives not to suffer through the acts of his adopted child. Where got you this, Gerald?" she proceeded, when after a short struggle she had succeeded in overcoming her emotion.

Gerald, who in his narrative of events, had purposely omitted all mention of Desborough, now detailed the occurrence at the hut, and concluded what the reader already knows, by stating that he had observed and severed from the settler, as he slept heavily on the floor, the portrait in question, which, added to the previous declaration of Matilda as to the obscurity of her birth, connected with other circ.u.mstances on board his gun boat, on his trip to Buffalo, had left an impression little short of certainty that he was indeed the father of the woman whom he so wildly loved.

For some minutes after this explanation there was a painful silence, which neither seemed anxious to interrupt--at length Gerald asked.

"But what had a circ.u.mstance, so capable of explanation, to do with the breaking off of your engagement, Matilda, or, did he, more proud--perhaps I should say less debased--than myself, shrink from uniting his fate with the daughter of a murderer?"

"True," said Matilda, musingly; "you have said, I think, that he slew your father. This thirst for revenge then would seem hereditary. THAT is the only, because it is the n.o.blest, inheritance I would owe to such a being."

"But your affair with your lover, Matilda--how terminated that?" demanded Gerald--with increasing paleness, and in a faltering tone.

"In his falsehood and my disgrace. Early the next morning I sent to him, and bade him seek me in the temple at the usual hour. He came, but it was only to blast my hopes-- to disappoint the pa.s.sion of the woman who doated upon him. He accused me of a vile intercourse with a slave, and almost maddened me with ign.o.ble reproaches. It was in vain that I swore to him most solemnly, the man he had seen was my father; a being whom motives of prudence compelled me to receive in private, even although my heart abhorred and loathed the relationship between us.

He treated my explanation with deriding contempt, bidding me either produce that father within twenty-four hours, or find some easier fool to persuade--that one, wearing the hue and features of the black could, by human possibility, be the parent of a white woman. Again I explained the seeming incongruity, by urging that the hasty and imperfect view he had taken was of a mask, imitating the features of a negro, which my father had brought with him as a disguise, and which he had hastily resumed on hearing the noise of the key in the door. I even admitted, as an excuse for seeing him thus clandestinely, the lowly origin of my father, and the base occupation he followed of a treacherous spy who, residing in the Canadas, came, for the mere consideration of gold, to sell political information to the enemies of the country that gave him asylum and protection. I added that his visit to me was to extort money, under a threat of publishing our consanguinity, and that dread of his (my lover's) partiality being decreased by the disclosure, had induced me to throw my arms, in the earnestness of entreaty upon his neck, and implore his secrecy; promising to reward him generously for his silence. I moreover urged him, if he still doubted, to make inquiry of Major Montgomerie, and ascertain from him whether I was not indeed the niece of his adoption, and not of his blood.

Finally I humbled myself in the dust and, like a fawning reptile, clasped his knees in my arms, entreating mercy and justice. But no," and the voice of Matilda grew deeper, and her form became more erect; "neither mercy nor justice dwelt in that hard heart, and he spurned me rudely from him. Nothing short of the production of him he persisted in calling my vile paramour, would satisfy him; but my ign.o.ble parent had received from me the reward of his secrecy, and he had departed once more to the Canadas. And thus," pursued Matilda, her voice trembling with emotion, "was, I made the victim of the most diabolical suspicion that ever haunted the breast of man."

Gerald was greatly affected. His pa.s.sion for Matilda seemed to increase in proportion with his sympathy for her wrongs, and he clasped her energetically to his heart.

"Finding him resolute in attaching to me the debasing imputation," pursued the American, "it suddenly flashed upon my mind, that this was but a pretext to free himself from his engagement, and that he was glad to accomplish his object through the first means that offered. Oh, Gerald, I cannot paint the extraordinary change that came over my feelings at this thought; much less give, you an idea of the rapidity with which that change was effected.

One moment before and, although degraded and unjustly accused, I had loved him with all the ardour of which a woman's heart is capable: NOW I hated, loathed, detested him; and had he sunk at my feet, I would have spurned him from me with indignation and scorn. I could not but be conscious that the very act of having yielded myself up to him, had armed my lover with the power to accuse me of infidelity, and the more I fingered on the want of generosity such a suspicion implied, the more rooted became my dislike, the more profound my contempt for him, who could thus repay so great a proof of confidingness and affection."

"It was even while I lay grovelling at his feet," pursued Matilda, after a momentary pause, during which she evinced intense agitation, "that this sadden change (excited by this most unheard of injustice) came over my mind--I rose and stood before him; then asked, in a voice in which no evidence of pa.s.sion could be traced, what excuse he meant to make to Major Montgomerie, for having thus broken off his engagement. He started at my sudden calmness of manner, but said that he thought it might be as well for my sake to name, what I had already stated to him, in regard to the obscurity of my birth, as a plea for his seceding from the connexion. I told him that, under all the circ.u.mstances I thought this most advisable, and then pointing to the door, bade him begone, and never under any pretext whatever again to insult me with his presence.

When he had departed, I burst into a paroxysm of tears, but they were tears shed not for the loss of him I now despised, but of wild sorrow at my unmerited degradation.

That conflict over, the weakness had for ever pa.s.sed away, and never since that hour, has tear descended cheek of mine, a.s.sociated with the recollection of the villain who had thus dared to trifle with a heart, the full extent of whose pa.s.sions he has yet to learn."

There was a trembling of the whole person of Matilda, which told how much her feelings had been excited by the recollection of what she narrated, and Gerald, as he gazed on her beautiful form, could not but wonder at the apathy of the man who could thus have heartlessly thrown if from him for ever.

"Had the injury terminated here," resumed Matilda, "bitter as my humiliation was my growing dislike for him who had so ungenerously inflicted it, might have enabled me to endure it. But, not satisfied with destroying the happiness of her who had sacrificed all for his sake, my perfidious lover had yet a blow in reserve for me, compared with which his antecedent conduct was mercy. Gerald," she continued, as she pressed his arm with a convulsive grasp, "will you believe that the monster had the infamy to confide to one of his most intimate a.s.sociates, that his rupture with me was occasioned by his having discovered me in the arms of a slave--of one of those vile beings communion with whom my soul in any sense abhorred? How shall I describe the terrible feeling that came over my insulted heart at that moment. But no, no--description were impossible. This a.s.sociate--this friend of his-- dared, on the very strength of this infamous imputation, to pollute my ear with his disrespectful pa.s.sion, and when, in a transport of contempt and anger, I spurned him from me, he taunted me with that which I believed confined to the breast, as it had been engendered only in the suspicion, of my betrayer. Oh! if it be dreadful to be falsely accused by those whom we have loved in intimacy, how much more so it to know that they have not had even the common humanity to conceal our supposed weakness from the world. From that moment revenge took possession of my soul, and I swore that my destroyer should perish by the hand of her whose innocence and whose peace he had blasted for ever."

"Shortly after this event," resumed Matilda, "my base lover was ordered to join his Regiment then, stationed at Detroit. A year pa.s.sed away, and during that period, my mind pondered unceasingly on the means of accomplishing my purpose of revenge; and so completely did I devote myself to a cool and unprejudiced examination of the subject, that what the vulgar crowd term guilt, appeared to me plain virtue. On the war breaking out, Major Montgomerie was also ordered to join the Regiment at Detroit, and thither I entreated him, to suffer me to accompany him. He consented, for knowing nothing of the causes which had turned my love into gall, he thought it not improbable that a meeting with my late lover might be productive of a removal of his prejudices, and our consequent reunion. Little did he dream that it was with a view to plunge a dagger into my destroyer's false heart, that I evinced so much eagerness to undertake so long, and so disagreeable a journey."

"Little more remains to be added," pursued Matilda, as she fixed her dark eyes with a softened expression on those of Gerald, "since, with the occurrences at Detroit you are already sufficiently acquainted. Yet there is one point upon which I would explain myself. When I first became your prisoner, my mind had been worked up to the highest pitch of determination, and in my captor I at first beheld but an evil Genius who had interposed himself between me and my just revenge, when on the very eve of its consummation. Hence my petulance and impatience while in the presence of your n.o.ble General."

"And whence that look Matilda, that peculiar glance, which you bestowed upon me even within the same hour?"

Because in your frank and fearless mien I saw that manly honor and fidelity, the want of which had undone me; besides it flashed across my mind that daring, such as I have witnessed yours in the capture of our boat, might, if enlisted in my behalf, securely accomplish my revenge.

"Then, if so, why the cold, the mortifying reserve, you manifested when we met at dinner at my uncle's table?"

"Because I had also recollected that, degraded as I was, I ought not to seek the love of an honorable man, and that to win you to my interest would be of no avail, as, separated by the national quarrel, you could not, by possibility, be near to aid me in my plans."

"Then," said Gerald reproachfully, "it was merely to make me an instrument of vengeance that you sought me. Unkind Matilda!"

"Nay, Gerald,--recollect, that then I had not learnt to know you as I do now--I will not deny that when first I saw you, a secret instinct told me you were one whom I would have deeply loved had I never loved before; but betrayed and disappointed as I had been, I looked upon all men with a species of loathing--my kind, good, excellent, more than father, excepted--and yet, Gerald, there were moments when I wished even him dead." (Gerald started)--"yes! dead--because I knew the anguish that would crush his heart if he should ever learn that the false brand of the a.s.sa.s.sin: had been affixed to the brow of his adopted child." Matilda sighed profoundly, and then resumed. "Later however, when the absence of its object had in some degree abated the keenness of my thirst for revenge, and when more frequent intercourse had made me acquainted with the generous qualities of your mind, I loved you Gerald, although I would not avow it, with a fervor I had never believed myself a second time capable of entertaining."

Again the countenance of Matilda was radiant with the expression just alluded to by her lover. Gerald gazed at her as though his very being hung upon the continuance of that fascinating influence, and again he clasped her to his heart.

"Matilda! oh my own betrothed Matilda!" he murmured.

"Yes your own betrothed," repeated the American highly excited, the wife of your affection and your choice, who has been held up to calumny and scorn. Think of that, Gerald; she on whose fond bosom you are to repose your aching head, she who glories in her beauty only because it is beauty in your eyes, has been, betrayed, accused of a vile pa.s.sion for a slave; yet he--the fiend who has done this grievous wrong--he who has stamped your wife with ignominy, and even published her shame-still lives.

Within a week," she resumed, in a voice hoa.r.s.e from exertion. "Yes, within a week, Gerald, he will be here--perhaps to deride and contemn you for the choice you have made."

"Within a week he dies," exclaimed the youth. "Matilda, come what will, he dies. Life is death without you, and with you even crime may sit lightly on my soul. But we will fly far from the habitations of man. The forest shall be our home, and when the past recurs to me you shall smile upon me with that smile--look upon me with that look, and I will forget it all. Yes" he pursued, with a fierce excitement s.n.a.t.c.hing up the holy book, and again carrying it to his lips--"once more I repeat my oath. He who has thus wronged you, my own Matilda, dies--dies by the hand of Gerald Grantham--of your affianced husband."

There was another long embrace, after which the plan of operations was distinctly explained and decided upon.

They then separated for the night--the infatuated Gerald with a load of guilt at his heart, no effort of his reason could remove, returning by the route he had followed on the preceding evening to his residence in the town.

CHAPTER XIII.

Leaving the lost Gerald for a time to all the horrors of his position, in which it would be difficult to say whether remorse or pa.s.sion (each intensest of its kind) predominated, let us return to the scene where we first introduced him to the reader, and take a review of the Military events pa.s.sing in that quarter.

After the defeat of the British columns at Sandusky, so far from any renewed attempt being made to interrupt the enemy in his strong holds, it became a question whether the position on the Michigan frontier could be much longer preserved. To the perseverance and prompt.i.tude of the Americans, in bringing new armies into the field, we have already had occasion to allude; but there was another quarter in which their strength had insensibly gathered, until it eventually a.s.sumed an aspect that carried apprehension to every heart. Since the loss of their flotilla at Detroit, in the preceding year, the Americans had commenced with vigour to equip one at Buffalo, which, in number and weight of metal, was intended to surpa.s.s the naval force on Lake Erie; and so silently and cautiously had they accomplished this task, that it was scarcely known at Amherstburg that a squadron was in the course of preparation, when that squadron (to which had been added the schooner captured from Gerald Grantham the preceding autumn) suddenly appeared off the harbour, defying their enemies to the combat. But the English vessels were in no condition to cope with so powerful an enemy, and although many a gallant spirit burned to be led against those who so evidently taunted them, the safety of the Garrisons depended too much on the issue, for that issue to be lightly tempted.

But misfortune was now beginning to overcast the hitherto fair prospects of the British arms in the Western District of the Canadas; and what the taunts of an enemy, triumphing in the consciousness of a superior numerical force, could not effect, an imperative and miserably provided for necessity eventually compelled. Maintaining as we did a large body of wild and reckless warriors, together with their families, it may be naturally supposed the excesses of these people were not few; but it would have required one to have seen, to have believed, the prodigal waste of which they were often guilty. Acknowledging no other law than their own will, following no other line of conduct than that suggested by their own caprice, they had as little respect for the property of the Canadian inhabitant as they would have entertained for that of the American enemy. And hence it resulted, that if an Indian preferred a piece of fresh, to the salted meat daily issued from the Commissariat, nothing was more common than for him to kill the first head of cattle he found grazing on the skirt of the forest; secure the small portion he wanted; and leave the remainder to serve as carrion to the birds of prey of the country. Nay, to such an extent wax this wanton spoliation carried, that instances have repeatedly occurred wherein cattle have been slain and left to putrify in the sun, merely because a warrior found it the most convenient mode by which to possess himself of a powder horn. All this was done openly--in the broad face of day, and in the full cognizance of the authorities; yet was there no provision made to meet the difficulties so guilty a waste was certain eventually to entail. At length the effect began to make itself apparent, and it was shortly after the first appearance of the American fleet that the scarcity of food began to be so severely felt as to compel the English squadron, at all hazards, to leave the port in search of supplies.

At this period, the vessel described in the commencement of our story, as having engaged so much of the interest and attention of all parties, had just been launched and rigged. Properly armed she was not, for there were no guns of the description used on ship board wherewith to arm her; but now that the occasion became imperative, all nicety was disregarded In the equipment; and guns that lately bristled from the ramparts of the fort were soon to be seen protruding their long and unequal necks from the ports. She was a gallant ship, notwithstanding the incongruity of her armament, and had her brave crew possessed but the experience of those who are nursed on the salt waves of ocean, might have fought a more fortunate fight (a better or a braver was impossible) than she did.

But in the whole of the English fleet there could not be counted three score able or experienced seamen; the remainder were children of the Canadian Lakes, warm with the desire to distinguish themselves in the eyes of their more veteran European companions, but without the knowledge to make their enthusiasm sufficiently available. The Americans, on the contrary, were all sons of the ocean.

It was a glorious day in September, the beautiful September of Canada, when the gallant Commodore Barclay sailed with his fleet, ostensibly in fulfilment on the mission for which it was dispatched, but in reality winder the firm expectation of being provoked to action by his stronger and better disciplined enemy. To say that he would have sought that enemy, under the disadvantages beneath which he knew himself to labor, would be to say that which would reflect little credit on his judgment; but, although not in a condition to hold forth the flag of defiance, where there was an inferiority in all but the skill of the leader and the personal courage of the men, he was not one to shun the battle that should be forced upon him. Still to him it was an anxious moment, because the fame of other days hung upon an issue over which no efforts of his own could hold mastery, and as he gazed at his armless sleeve, he sighed for the presence of those whose agency had coupled the recollection of past victory with that mutilated proof of honorable conduct.

He knew, moreover, the magnitude of the stake for which he was thus compelled to play, and that defeat to him would be the loss of the whole of the Western District.

While the British ascendancy could be maintained on the Lake, there was little fear, lined as the forests were with Indian warriors, that the Americans would push any considerable force beyond the boundaries they had a.s.signed themselves at Sandusky and on the Miami; but a victory once obtained by their fleet, there could be nothing to oppose the pa.s.sage of their army in vessels and boats across the Lake.

Such were the thoughts that filled the mind of the Commodore (in common with all who calmly reasoned on the subject) as he crossed the bar that separated him from his enemy; but neither in look, nor word, nor deed, was there aught to reveal what was pa.s.sing in the inward man; and when later the hostile fleet was signalized as bearing down upon them, he gave his orders to prepare formation, in the animated voice of one who finds certain victory within his reach, and exultingly hastens to secure it.

The events of that day the page of History has already, recorded in terms alike flattering to the conqueror and the conquered. Let it suffice that the Americans triumphed.

What the issue would have been, independently of all the disadvantages under which the English Commodore labored, had the latter not been borne severely wounded to his cabin early in the action, it is impossible to say; but as the final defeat was owing to his two princ.i.p.al vessels getting foul of each other, without being able to extricate themselves, it is not unfair to presume that his presence on deck would have done much to remedy the confusion produced by the accident.

One incident only connected with this action, and in which two individuals with whom our readers have made partial acquaintance, were the princ.i.p.al performers, we will venture to relate. It will be recollected that at the dinner table at Colonel D'Egville's on the day of the capture of Major Montgomerie, and his party, among the guests were the chiefs Split-log and Walk-in-the-Water, the former distinguished by a huge bulbous excrescence miscalled a nose, and exquisitely slit ears that dangled gracefully upon his shoulders, at every movement of his Memnon-like head: the latter by his striking resemblance to the puritans of the days of the Commonwealth. Now it so happened that Messieurs Split-log and Walk-in-the-water were filled with an unconquerable desire to distinguish themselves at sea, as they had often done on terra firma, and they accordingly proffered their services in the forth-coming struggle. We hope we shall not be considered as detracting in the slightest degree from the courage of these chiefs, when we state that the position chosen by them on board the Commodore's ship, was one where they apprehended the least danger to themselves--namely in the tops; for although an Indian will scorn to shrink from a rifle bullet or tomahawk, it by no means enters into his code of bravery that he is to submit himself to the terrible ordeal of being battered to a jelly by a huge globe of solid iron. With, an alertness not common to the habits and corpulence of these celebrated chiefs, and fully calculating on exemption from danger while they plied their rifles successfully themselves, they ascended to the main top long before the action commenced. But they had counted without their host, for no sooner did the enemy begin to suffer from their fire, and perceive the quarter whence it came, when a swivel gun, loaded with grape, was brought to hear upon the point where they lay concealed. They had provided themselves with a breast work against small arms, but no breast work could resist the shower of iron hail that was directed towards them; and in proportion as the splinters and shot flew about their ears, so did their desire to distinguish themselves oze forth from the palms of Messrs. Split-log and Walk-in-the-Water; in so much so indeed that, without waiting to descend the rigging in the usual manner, each abandoning his rifle, slid down by the first rope on which he could lay his hands; nor stayed his course until he found himself squatted, out of all reach of danger in the lowest hold, and within the huge coils of a cable where already lay ensconced a black bear, the pet of one of the sailors. In this comfortable hiding place were Messrs Split-log and Walk-in-the-Water found, when at the close of the action they became, in common with those with whose fortunes they had identified themselves, prisoners of the Americans.