a high degree that any
relief to the strain, though it brought the certainty of attack, was
welcome.

"You're sure those cries were made by our enemies?" said young Colden.

"Beyond a doubt," replied Willet. "I can tell the difference between
the note and that of a genuine wolf, but then I've spent many years in
the wilderness, and I had to learn these things in order to live.
They'll send forward scouts, and they'll expect to find you and your
men around the fire, most of you asleep. When they miss you there
they'll try to locate you, and they'll soon trail us to these bushes."

Captain James Colden had his share of pride, and much faith in
himself, but he had nobility of soul, too.

"I believe you implicitly, Mr. Willet," he said. "If it had not been
for you and your friends the enemy would have been upon us when we
expected him not at all, and 'tis most likely that all of us would
have been killed and scalped. So, I thank you now, lest I fall in the
battle, and it be too late then to express my gratitude."

It was a little bit formal, and a little bit youthful, but Willet
accepted the words in the fine spirit in which they were uttered.

"What we did was no more than we should have done," he replied, "and
you'll pay us back. In such times as these everybody ought to help
everybody else. Caution your soldiers, captain, won't you, not to
make any noise at all. The wolf will howl no more, and I fancy their
scouts are now within two or three hundred yards of the fire. I'm glad
it's turned darker."

The troop, hidden in the bushes, was now completely silent. The
Philadelphia men, used to contiguous houses and streets, were not
afraid, but they were appalled by their extraordinary position at
night, in the deep brush of an unknown wilderness with a creeping foe
coming down upon them. Many a hand quivered upon the rifle barrel, but
the heart of its owner did not tremble.

The moonlight was scant and the stars were few. To the city men trees
and bushes melted together in a general blackness, relieved only by a
single point of light where the fire yet smoldered, but Robert,
kneeling by the side of Tayoga, saw with his trained eyes the separate
trunks stretching away like columns, and then far beyond the fire he
thought he caught a glimpse of a red feather raised for a moment above
the undergrowth.

"Did you see!" he whispered to Tayoga.

"Yes. It was a painted feather in the scalp lock of a Huron," replied
the On