lowing the trail."' I
can fairly hear him say it, with his eyes looking right through the
young aide. 'Not I,' says Du Luth, 'I'm going around the hills and
come into the village over the long oak ridge!' 'You can't do it. I
have the Governor's order.' And then Du Luth drew himself up, La
Valterie says, and looked the aide (who wasn't used to this kind of a
soldier, and wished himself back under the Governor's petticoats) up
and down till the fellow got red as a Lower Town girl. 'Tell your
commanding officer,' says Du Luth, in his big voice, 'that the advance
will "push forward, following the trail,"--and may God have mercy on
our poor souls!'

"Well, Menard, they did it, nine hundred of them. And we came on, a
quarter of a league after, with sixteen hundred more. We got into the
first defile, and through it, with never a sound. Then I was sure of
trouble in the second, but long after the advance had had time to get
through, everything was still. There was still the third defile, just
before you reach the marsh, and my head was spinning, waiting for the
first shot and wondering where we were to catch it and how many of us
were to get out alive. And then, all at once it came. You see the
Senecas, three hundred of them at least, were in the brush up on the
right slope of the third defile; and as many more were in the elder
thickets and swamp grass ahead and to the left. They let the whole
advance get through,--fooled every man of Du Luth's scouts,--and then
came at them from all sides. We heard the noise--I never heard a
worse--and started up on the run; and then there was the strangest
mess I ever got into. They had surprised the advance, right
enough,--we could see Du Luth and Tonty running about knocking men
down and bellowing out orders to hold their force together,--but you
see the Senecas never dreamed that a larger force was coming on
behind, and we struck them like a whirlwind. Well, for nearly an hour
we didn't know what was going on. Our Indians and the Senecas were so
mixed together that we dared not shoot to kill. Our own boys, even the
regulars, lost their heads and fell into the tangle. It was all
yelling and whooping and banging and running around, with the smoke so
thick that you couldn't find the trail or the hills or the swamp. I
was crowded up to my arms in water and mud for the last part of the
time. Once the smoke lifted a little, and I saw what I thought to be a
mission Indian, not five yards away,