e
cultivated region from Johnstown south and west--do what Sullivan did,
lay waste the rebel grain belt, burn fodder, destroy all orchards--God!
it will go hard with the frontier again." He swung around to Harkness:
"It's horrible to me, Captain--and Walter Butler not yet washed clean
of the blood of Cherry Valley. I tell you, loyal as I am, humble
subject of my King, whom I reverence, I affirm that this blackened,
blood-soaked frontier is a barrier to England which she can never,
never overcome, and though we win out to-day, and though we hang the
rebels thick as pears in Lispenard's orchards, that barrier will
remain, year by year fencing us in, crowding us back to the ocean, to
our ships, back to the land from whence we English came. And for all
time will the memory of these horrors set America's face against us--if
not for all time, yet our children's children and their children shall
not outlive the tradition burned into the heart of this quivering land
we hold to-day, half shackled, still struggling, already rising to its
bleeding knees."

"Gad!" breathed O'Neil, "'tis threason ye come singin' to the chune o'
Yankee Doodle-doo, Sir Peter."

"It's sense," said Sir Peter, already smiling at his own heat.

"So Ross and the Butlers are to strike at the rebel granaries?"
repeated Harkness, musing.

"Yes; they're gathering on the eastern lakes and at Niagara--Butler's
Rangers, Johnson's Greens, Brant's Iroquois, some Jaegers, a few
regulars, and the usual partizan band of painted whites who disgrace us
all, by Heaven! But there," added Sir Peter, smiling, "I've done with
the vapors. I bear no arms, and it is unfit that I should judge those
who do. Only," and his voice rang a little, "I understand battles, not
butchery. Gentlemen, to the British Army! the regulars, God bless 'em!
Bumpers, gentlemen!"

I heard O'Neil muttering, as he smacked his lips after the toast, "And
to hell with the Hessians! Bad cess to the Dootch scuts!"

"Did you say the rendezvous is at Niagara?" inquired Harkness.

"I've heard so. I've heard, too, of some other spot--an Indian
name--Thend--Thend--plague take it! Ah, I have it--Thendara. You know
it, Carus?" he asked, turning so suddenly on me that my guilty heart
ceased beating for a second.

"I have heard of it," I said, finding a voice scarce like my own.
"Where is it, Sir Peter?"

"Why, here in New York there has ever been a fable about a lost town in
the wilderness called Thenda