When the barracks were lost in slumber, and the parade was deserted but
for the moon, and the soft wind, and the echo of the tramp of the
sentry, Captain Stuart went over to Captain Demere's house, and there
until late the two discussed the practicabilities, that each, like a
blind trail, promised thoroughfare and led but to confusion. The
officers did not dare to call for volunteers to carry dispatches to
Montgomery, in the face of the fact that the express just arrived could
not be prevailed on to return. Without, moreover, some assurance of the
safety of the messengers previously sent out, no man would now so
lightly venture his life as to seek to slip through the vigilant savage
hordes. To explain the terrors of the crisis to the garrison would be
to have the ferocious Cherokees without, and panic, mutiny, and violence
within. Yet a man must go; a man who would return; a man who would risk
torture and death twice. "For we must have some assurance of the
delivery of our dispatches," Stuart argued. "I am anxious as to the
homing qualities of our dove that we are about to send out of this ark
of ours," he said, as he lay stretched out at full length on the buffalo
rug on the floor, in the moonlight that fell so peacefully in at the
window of his friend's bedroom. Demere was recumbent on his narrow
camp-bed, so still, so silent, that more than once Stuart asked him if
he slept.

"How can I sleep,--with this sense of responsibility?" Demere returned,
reproachfully.

But Stuart slept presently, waking once to reply to Demere's remark that
a married man would have the homing quality desired, the fort holding
his family; Stuart declared that no one would be willing to leave wife
and children to such protection as other men might have presence of mind
to give them in a desperate crisis. The mere communication might create
a panic.

"Of all things," said Stuart, as he lay at his stalwart length, his
long, fair hair blowsing in the wind over the rug, "I am most afraid of
fear."

When Demere presently asked him if he were quite comfortable down there,
his unceremonious presence placing him somewhat in the position of
guest, his silence answered for him, and he did not again speak or stir
until the drums were sounding without and the troops were falling in
line for roll-call.

Neither gave sign of their vigil; they both were exceedingly spruce, and
fresh, and well set up, to sustain the covert scrutiny of the garrison,