istance of the marauders. So, almost daily, stories of
horrible cruelty came to the fort, plunging the commander into an agony
of rage and dejection at his very impotence. The fort was soon crowded
with refugees,--wives bewailing their husbands, husbands swearing to
avenge their wives, parents lamenting their children, children of a
sudden made orphans,--and from north and south, scores of hard-featured,
steel-eyed men came to us, their rifles in their hands, to offer their
services, and after a time these came to be one of the most valuable
portions of our force.

Ah, the stories they told us! Tragedies such as that which Spiltdorph and
I had come upon had been repeated scores of times. The settler who had
left his cabin at daybreak in search of game, or to carry his furs to the
nearest post, returned at sundown to find only a smoking heap of ashes
where his home had been, and among them the charred and mutilated bodies
of his wife and children. Horror succeeded horror, and the climax came
one day when we were passing a little schoolhouse some miles below the
fort, in the midst of a district well populated. Wondering at the
unwonted silence, we dismounted, opened the door, and looked within. The
master lay upon the platform with his pupils around him, all dead and
newly scalped. The savages had passed that way not half an hour before.

And to add to the trials of the commander, his troops, hastily got
together, were most of them impatient of restraint or discipline, and
with no knowledge of warfare, while the governor and the House of
Burgesses demanded that he undertake impossibilities. It was a dreary,
trying, thankless task.

"They expect me to perform miracles," he said to me bitterly one day.
"How am I to protect a frontier four hundred miles in length with five or
six hundred effective men, against an enemy who knows every foot of the
ground, and who can find a hiding-place at every step?"

Only by the sternest measures could many of the levies be brought to the
fort, and one man--a captain, God save the mark!--sent word that he and
his company could not come because their corn had not yet been got in.
Yet, in spite of all these drawbacks, we did accomplish something. There
were a few of the Iroquois who yet remained our friends, and the general
spared no effort to retain their goodwill, for their services were
invaluable. With a lofty contempt for the Delawares and Shawanoes, whom
they had one time subjugated