d by an old man whose fate
might be the same that very night, affected me with such an
overpowering sense of helplessness that I could find no word to
reassure either him or the men and boys who now came crowding around
us, asking anxiously if we had news from the Sacandaga or from the
north.

All I could do was to urge them to leave their homes and go to
Johnstown; but they shook their heads, some asserting that Johnstown
was full of Tories, awaiting the coming of Walter Butler to rise and
massacre everybody; others declaring that the Yellow Tavern, which had
been fortified, was safer than Albany itself. None would leave house or
land; and whether these people really believed that they could hold out
against a sudden onslaught, I never knew. They were the usual mixture
of races, some of low Dutch extraction, like the Vanderveers and
Wemples, some high Dutch, like the Kleins; and, around me, I saw,
recognized, and greeted people who in peaceful days had been settled in
these parts, and some among them had worked for my father--honest,
simple folk, like Patrick Farris, with his pretty Dutch wife and
tow-headed youngsters; and John Warren, once my father's head groom,
and Jacob Klock, kinsman of the well-known people of that name.

The Oneida, pressed and questioned on every side, replied in guarded
monosyllables; poor Lyn Montour, wrapped to the eyes in her blanket,
passed for an Iroquois youth, and was questioned mercilessly, until I
interposed and opened the tavern door for her and for Little Otter.

"I tell you, Wemple," I said, turning on the tavern porch to address
the people, "there is no safety here for you if Walter Butler or Sir
John arrive here in force. It will be hatchet and torch again--the same
story, due to the same strange Dutch obstinacy, or German apathy, or
Yankee foolhardiness. In the grain belt it is different; there the
farmers are obliged to expose themselves because our army needs bread.
But your corn and buckwheat and pumpkins and apples can be left for a
week or two until we see how this thing is going to end. Be sensible;
stack what you can, but don't wait to thresh or grind. Bury your
apples; let the cider go; harness up; gather your cattle and sheep;
pack up the clock and feather bed, and move to Johnstown with your
families. In a week or two you will know whether this country is to be
given to the torch again, or whether, by God's grace, Colonel Willett
is to send Walter Butler packing! I