The steed received the bullet in his head, plunged forward madly, to the no small danger of Ralph, who had now got a little before him, but in a few moments lay supine upon the stream, and was borne down by its current.  The youth, practised in such exercises, pressed forward under the surface for a sufficient time to enable him to avoid the present glance of the enemy, and at length, in safety, rounding a jutting point of the shore, which effectually concealed him from their eyes, he gained the dry land, at the very moment in which Munro, with more success, was clambering, still mounted, up the steep sides of a neighboring and slippery bank.

Familiar with such scenes, the landlord had duly estimated the doubtful chances of his life in swimming the river directly in sight of the pursuers.  He had, therefore, taken the precaution to oblique considerably to the left from the direct course, and did not, in consequence, appear in sight, owing to the sinuous windings of the stream, until he had actually gained the shore.

The youth beheld him at this moment, and shouted aloud his own situation and safety.  In a voice indicative of restored confidence in himself, no less than in his fate, the landlord, by a similar shout, recognised him, and was bending forward to the spot where he stood, when the sharp and joint report of three rifles from the opposite banks, attested the discovery of his person; and, in the same instant, the rider tottered forward in his saddle, his grasp was relaxed upon the rein, and, without a word, he toppled from his seat, and was borne for a few paces by his horse, dragged forward by one of his feet, which had not been released from the stirrup.

He fell, at length, and the youth came up with him.  He heard the groans of the wounded man, and, though exposing himself to the same chance, he could not determine upon flight.  He might possibly have saved himself by taking the now freed animal which the, landlord had ridden, and at once burying himself in the nation.  But the noble weakness of pity determined him otherwise; and, without scruple or fear, he resolutely advanced to the spot whore Munro lay, though full in the sight of the pursuers, and prepared to render him what assistance he could.  One of the troopers, in the meantime, had swum the river; and, freeing the flat from its chains, had directed it across the stream for the passage of his companions.  It was not long before they had surrounded the fugitives, and Ralph Colleton was again a prisoner, and once more made conscious of the dreadful doom from which he had, at one moment, almost conceived himself to have escaped.

Munro had been shockingly wounded.  One ball had pierced his thigh, inflicting a severe, though probably not a fatal wound.  Another, and this had been enough, had penetrated directly behind the eyes, keeping its course so truly across, as to tear and turn the bloody orbs completely out upon the cheek beneath.  The first words of the dying man were—­