and never failed to remain until they had
wasted their earnings in the fashion that best pleased their fancy.

"Even then the Indians were degenerate, given over to idleness and
debauchery; but they were not so far sunk in these habits as are the
dull, lazy fellows who sell you the baskets and beaded moccasins that
the squaws make to-day. They were superstitious, malicious,
revengeful, and they were almost in a condition of savagery, for the
only law they knew was the law our guns enforced. Some authority was
vested in the factor, and he was not slow to exert it when a flagrant
offense was committed near by.

"'There's no band of Indians in these parts,' I was told, 'that can
scare McLeod. He'll see justice done for and against them as between
man and man.'

"Fort Refuge was set in a wide clearing. It was built of logs and
surrounded by a high, stout stockade. Admittance to the yard was by a
great gate, which was closed promptly at sundown, and always strongly
barred. We had no garrison regularly stationed there to defend us. In
all, it may be, we could muster nine men--McLeod, two clerks, and a
number of stout fellows who helped handle the stores. Moreover, were
our gate to be closed and our fort surrounded by a hostile force, we
should be utterly cut off from communication with those quarters
whence relief might come. We had the company's wares to guard, and we
knew that once we were overcome, whatever the object of the attack,
the wares and our lives would be lost together.

"'But we can stand a long siege,' I used to think; and indeed there
was good ground for comfort in that.

"Our stockade was impregnable to an attack by force, no doubt; but as
it soon appeared, it was no more than a paper ribbon before the wily
strategy of the Indians. One night, when I had shut the gates and
dropped the bars, I heard a long-drawn cry--a scream, in which it was
not hard to detect the quality of terror and great stress. It came, as
I thought, from the edge of the forest. When it was repeated, near at
hand, my heart went to my mouth, for I knew that a band of Indians was
encamped beyond, and had been carousing for a week past. Then came a
knocking at the gate--a desperate pounding and kicking.

"'Let me in! Open! Open!' I heard a man cry.

"I had my hands on the bar to lift it and throw open the gate when
McLeod came out of his house.

"'Stop!' he shouted.

"I withdrew from the gate. He approached, waved me back, and pu