orably; "a
frontiersman of the Maumee country, and fairly skilled in Indian ways.
I have come to volunteer my services to go with you."

"You are anxious to die? have the spirit of a Jesuit, perchance, and
are ambitious of martyrdom?"

"Not unusually so, sir, but I think the danger overrated by these
gentlemen. At least, I am ready and willing to go."

"And so you shall, lad!" cried the old soldier, striking a hand upon
his knee. "You are of the race of the long rifles; I know your kind
well. Not another word, William! here is a man worth any twenty of
your French beaux strutting with a sword. Now we start at once, and
shall have this matter settled speedily."

The earliest haze of the fast-descending twilight was hovering over the
level plain as we two went forth. In the west, the red tinge of the
sun, which had just disappeared below the horizon, lingered well up in
the sky. Against it we could see, clearly outlined in inky blackness,
the distant Indian wigwams; while to the eastward the crimson light was
reflected in fantastic glow upon the heaving surface of the lake. For
a moment we paused, standing upon the slope of the mound on which the
Fort was built, and gazed about us. There was little movement to
arrest the eye. The dull, dreary level of shore and prairie was
deserted; what the more distant mounds of sand or the overhanging river
banks might hide of savage watchers, we could only conjecture.
Seemingly the mass of Indian life, which only the day before had
overflowed that vacant space, had vanished as if by some sorcerer's
magic. To me, this unexpected silence and dreary barrenness were
astounding; I gazed about me fairly bewildered, almost dreaming for the
moment that our foes had lifted the long siege and departed while I
slept. Heald no doubt read the thought in my eyes, for he laid a
kindly hand upon my sleeve and pointed westward.

"They are all yonder, lad, at the camp,--in council, like enough. Mark
you, Wayland, how much farther to the south the limit of their camp
extends than when the sun sank last night? Saint George! they must
have added all of fifty wigwams to their village! They gather like
crows about a dead body. It has an ugly look."

"Yet 't is strange they leave the Fort unguarded, so that the garrison
may come and go unhindered. 'T is not the usual practice of Indian
warfare."

"Unguarded? Faith! the hundreds of miles of wilderness between us and
our nearest neigh