with my rifle-stock, while Elerson ran around the defenses
bawling for admittance.

"Hurry, Elerson!" I cried, hammering madly for entrance; "here come the
enemy's baggage-wagons up the street!"

"Jack Mount! Jack Mount! Let us in, ye crazy loon!" shouted Elerson.

Somebody began to unbolt the heavy slab gate; it creaked and swung just
wide enough for a man to squeeze through. I shoved Elerson inside and
followed, pushing into a mob of scared militia and panic-stricken
citizens toward a huge buckskinned figure at a stockade loophole on the
left.

"Jack Mount!" I called, "where are the women? Are they safe?"

He looked around at me, nodded in a dazed and hesitating manner, then
wheeled quick as a flash, and fired through the slit in the logs.

I crawled up to the epaulment and peered down into the dusty street. It
was choked with the enemy's baggage-wagons, now thrown into terrible
confusion by the shot from Mount's rifle. Horses reared, backed,
swerved, swung around, and broke into a terrified gallop; teamsters
swore and lashed at their maddened animals, and some batmen, carrying a
dead or wounded teamster, flung their limp burden into a wagon, and,
seizing the horses' bits, urged them up the hill in a torrent of dust.

I fumbled for my ranger's whistle, set it to my lips, and blew the
"Cease firing!"

"Let them alone!" I shouted angrily at Mount. "Have you no better work
than to waste powder on a parcel of frightened clodhoppers? Send those
militiamen to their posts! Two to a loop, yonder! Lively, lads; and see
that you fire at nothing except Indians and soldiers. Jack, come up
here!"

The big rifleman mounted the ladder and leaped to the rifle-platform,
which quivered beneath his weight.

"I thought I'd best sting them once," he muttered. "Their main force
has circled the town westward toward the Hall. Lord, sir, it was a bad
surprise they gave us, for we understood that Willett held them at
Tribes Hill!"

I caught his arm in a grip of iron, striving to speak, shaking him to
silence.

"Where--where is Miss Grey?" I said hoarsely. "You say the women are
safe, do you not?"

"Mr. Renault--sir--" he stammered, "I have just arrived at the jail--I
have not seen your wife."

My hand fell from his arm; his appalled face whitened.

"Last night, sir," he muttered, "she was at the Hall, watching the
flames in the sky where Butler was burning the Valley. I saw her there
in a crowd of townsfolk, women, children