Now that Roderick was gone, her heart seemed to follow him. She clung with fonder affection to the world that was to come, and where she was to meet him; but her babe, could she selfishly forsake it? Her heart was sorely lacerated. Eternity seemed close--terribly _close_ to her; and her husband being there, instituted to her a more endearing tie between this world and that mysterious "bourne from whence no traveller returns." She had no terror of this journey, for he whom she loved with all the strength of her soul had gone before and awaited her there. At times she fancied that he chid her delay; she felt drawn towards that spirit-world by a chord of affection which made her now yearn for it, as before she had wept and yearned for her Highland home.
But her babe--so innocent and so deserted--could she die and leave it among the Iroquois?
How did Roderick die--where? Peacefully or in torture? Was he buried, or lying still unentombed?
These dreadful questions and thoughts were ever before her in the intervals of waking from her fits of delirium, which often lasted for hours; and her snatches of sleep were filled by horrible dreams.
In these intervals a new hope dawned in her heart. Her husband might have escaped and gained Fort Edward or the army of Montcalm, and she might yet reach him with her child if protected by Orono. This idea gave a new and exciting impulse to her already overwrought frame; but it came, alas! too late, for, a few days after the birth of her little one, she too surely felt herself dying--dying there with none to hear her story, or to whom she could bequeath her helpless babe--a thought sufficient alone to kill her. With the last effort of her strength she took from her now matted hair the Celtic marriage brooch (the old palladium of her husband's family) which she had kept there concealed since the day of their departure from Fort William Henry, and fixing it to a fragment of her own dress, which she had wrapped round the infant, pointed to it, that Orono might deem it an amulet or talisman--"a great medicine"--and expired!
It was about the time of sunset, and before interring the body in a deep grave which he had scooped at the foot of a gum-tree, and lined with soft furs, Orono sat silent and watching in his wigwam. Near the dead mother her unconscious child slept peacefully. The poor Indian was perhaps praying, and feeling thankful in his heart that he had discharged a debt of gratitude, and would yet do more by conveying the little orphan to the nearest white settlement, and there leaving her to her fate.