l had
knocked my whole dang face down my throat! Nothin' but a handful o'
splinters in my poorty count'nance, makin' my head feel like a
porc'-pine. But I sort o' thought I heard somepin' give you a diff."

"Something did hit me," said Beverley, laying a hand on his breast,
"but I don't think it was a bullet. They seem to be getting our range
at last. Tell the men to keep well under cover. They must not expose
themselves until we are ready to charge."

The shock had brought him back to his duty as a leader of his little
company, and with the funeral bell of all his life's happiness tolling
in his agonized heart he turned afresh to directing the fire upon the
block-house.

About this time a runner came from Clark with an order to cease firing
and let a returning party of British scouts under Captain Lamothe
re-enter the fort unharmed. A strange order it seemed to both officers
and men; but it was implicitly obeyed. Clark's genius here made another
fine strategic flash. He knew that unless he let the scouts go back
into the stockade they would escape by running away, and might possibly
organize an army of Indians with which to succor Hamilton. But if they
were permitted to go inside they could be captured with the rest of the
garrison; hence his order.

A few minutes passed in dead silence; then Captain Lamothe and his
party marched close by where Beverley's squad was lying concealed. It
was a difficult task to restrain the creoles, for some of them hated
Lamothe. Oncle Jazon squirmed like a snake while they filed past all
unaware that an enemy lurked so near. When they reached the fort,
ladders were put down for them and they began to clamber over the wall,
crowding and pushing one another in wild haste. Oncle Jazon could hold
in no longer.

"Ya! ya! ya!" he yelled. "Look out! the ladder is a fallin' wi' ye!"

Then all the lurking crowd shouted as one man, and, sure enough, down
came a ladder--men and all in a crashing heap.

"Silence! silence!" Beverley commanded; but he could not check the wild
jeering and laughing, while the bruised and frightened scouts hastily
erected their ladder again, fairly tumbling over one another in their
haste to ascend, and so cleared the wall, falling into the stockade to
join the garrison.

"Ventrebleu!" shrieked Oncle Jazon. "They've gone to bed; but we'll
wake 'em up at the crack o' day an' give 'em a breakfas' o' hot lead!"

Now the fighting was resumed with redoubled spirit