This appalling intelligence produced a halt, during which Willoughby explained all he knew of the manner of his father’s death, which was merely the little he had been enabled to glean from Maud.  As soon as this duty was performed, the gentlemen proceeded together to the apartment of the mourners, each carrying a light.

Willoughby made an involuntary exclamation, when he perceived that the door of his mother’s room was open.  He had hoped Maud would have had the presence of mind to close and lock it; but here he found it, yawning as if to invite the entrance of enemies.  The light within, too, was extinguished, though, by the aid of the lanterns, he saw large traces of blood in the ante-room, and the passages he was obliged to thread.  All this hastened his steps.  Presently he stood in the chamber of death.

Short as had been the struggle, the thirst for scalps had led some of the savages to this sanctuary.  The instant the Indians had gained the court, some of the most ferocious of their number had rushed into the building, penetrating its recesses in a way to defile them with slaughter.  The first object that Willoughby saw was one of these ruthless warriors, stretched on the floor, with a living Indian, bleeding at half a dozen wounds, standing over him; the eye-balls of the latter were glaring like the tiger’s that is suddenly confronted to a foe.  An involuntary motion was made towards the rifle he carried, by the major; but the next look told him that the living Indian was Nick.  Then it was, that he gazed more steadily about him, and took in all the horrible truths of that fatal chamber.

Mrs. Willoughby was sealed in the chair where she had last been seen, perfectly dead.  No mark of violence was ever found on her body, however, and there is no doubt that her constant spirit had followed that of her husband to the other world, in submission to the blow which had separated them.  Beulah had been shot; not, as was afterwards ascertained, by any intentional aim, but by one of those random bullets, of which so many had been flying through the buildings.  The missile had passed through her heart, and she lay pressing the little Evert to her bosom, with that air of steady and unerring affection which had marked every act of her innocent and feeling life.  The boy himself, thanks to the tiger-like gallantry of Nick, had escaped unhurt.  The Tuscarora had seen a party of six take the direction of this chamber, and he followed with an instinct of their intentions.  When the leader entered the room, and found three dead bodies, he raised a yell that betokened his delight at the prospect of gaining so many scalps; at the next instant, while his fingers were actually entwined in the hair of Captain Willoughby, he fell by a blow from Wyandotte.  Nick next extinguished the lamp, and then succeeded a scene, which none of the actors, themselves, could have described.  Another Mohawk fell, and the remainder, ailer suffering horribly from the keen knife of Nick, as well as from blows received from each other, dragged themselves away, leaving the field to the Tuscarora.  The latter met the almost bewildered gaze of the major with a smile of grim triumph, as he pointed to the three bodies of the beloved ones, and said—­