Young Roche lay face downwards upon the rocky floor of the little cavern, great sobs breaking from him which he was unable to restrain.

Fritz, with a stern, set face, sat beside another prostrate figure--that of a man who looked more dead than alive, and whose head and arm were wrapped in linen bandages soaked through and through with blood.
It was Captain Pringle, their friend and comrade in Fort William Henry, who had elected to remain with the garrison when the other two took part in a sortie and cut themselves a path to the forest.
Had he remained with them, he might have fared better; he would at least have been spared the horrors of a scene which would now be branded forever upon his memory in characters of fire.
What had happened to that ill-fated fort Fritz and Roche knew little as yet.

They had heard the tremendous firing which had followed whilst they remained in hiding during the day the dawn of which had seen the last desperate sortie.

They had at night seen flames which spoke of Indian campfires all round the place, and from the complete cessation of firing after two they concluded that terms of surrender had been made.

They had meant to wander deeper and deeper into the forest, out of reach of possible peril from prowling Indians; but they had been unable to tear themselves away without learning more of the fate of the hapless fort and its garrison.
At daybreak--or rather with the, first grey of dawn--they had crept through the brushwood as stealthily as Indians themselves, only to be made aware shortly that something horrible and terrible was going on.