The speaker was Colonel Henry Innes, commandant of the fort, but as he
looked up and down the row of faces opposite him, he saw few which showed
assent. Scarcely had the rear-guard of Dunbar's troops disappeared among
the trees which lined the narrow military road, when Colonel Innes had
called this meeting of the officers left at the fort, "to decide," as the
summons put it, "on our future course of action." As if, I thought
indignantly to myself, there could be any question as to what our future
course of action should be.

"We are left here," continued the speaker, in a louder voice and growing
somewhat red in the face, "with scarce five hundred men, all provincials,
and most of them unfit for service. A great part of the army's equipment
has been abandoned or destroyed back there in the woods. In short, we are
so weak that we can hope neither to advance against the enemy nor to
repel an assault, should they march against us in force, as they are most
like to do."

For a moment there was an ominous silence.

"May I ask what it is you propose, Colonel Innes?" asked Captain
Waggoner at last.

"I propose to abandon the place," replied Innes, "and to fall back to
Winchester or some other point where our wounded may lie in safety and
our men have opportunity to recover from the fatigues of the campaign."

Again there was a moment's silence, and all of us, as by a common
impulse, glanced at Colonel Washington, who sat at one end of the table,
his head bowed in gloomy thought. The fever, which he had shaken off for
a time, had been brought back by the arduous work he had insisted on
performing, and he was but the shadow of his former self. He felt our
eyes upon him and suddenly raised his head.

"Do you really anticipate that the French will march against us, Colonel
Innes?" he asked quietly. "There were scarce three hundred of them at the
fort three weeks ago, hardly enough for an expedition of such moment, and
it is not likely that they can be reinforced to undertake any campaign
this summer."

"There would be little danger from the French themselves," retorted
Innes, with an angry flush, "but they will undoubtedly rally the Indians,
and lead them against us along the very road which Braddock cut over the
mountains. Fort Cumberland stands at one end of that road."

Washington smiled disdainfully.

"I have heard of few instances," he said, "where Indians have dared
attack a well-manned fortification, and of none