ost exhausted
defenders. It brought to many of the settlers the familiar old
sailor's maxim: "Redness 'a the morning, sailor's warning." Rising
in its crimson glory the sun flooded the valley, dyeing the river,
the leaves, the grass, the stones, tingeing everything with that
awful color which stained the stairs, the benches, the floor, even
the portholes of the block-house.

Historians call this the time that tried men's souls. If it tried
the men think what it must have been to those grand, heroic women.
Though they had helped the men load and fire nearly forty-eight
hours; though they had worked without a moment's rest and were now
ready to succumb to exhaustion; though the long room was full of
stifling smoke and the sickening odor of burned wood and powder, and
though the row of silent, covered bodies had steadily lengthened,
the thought of giving up never occurred to the women. Death there
would be sweet compared to what it would be at the hands of the
redmen.

At sunrise Silas Zane, bare-chested, his face dark and fierce,
strode into the bastion which was connected with the blockhouse. It
was a small shedlike room, and with portholes opening to the river
and the forest. This bastion had seen the severest fighting. Five
men had been killed here. As Silas entered four haggard and
powder-begrimed men, who were kneeling before the portholes, looked
up at him. A dead man lay in one corner.

"Smith's dead. That makes fifteen," said Silas. "Fifteen out of
forty-two, that leaves twenty-seven. We must hold out. Len, don't
expose yourselves recklessly. How goes it at the south bastion?"

"All right. There's been firin' over there all night," answered one
of the men. "I guess it's been kinder warm over that way. But I
ain't heard any shootin' for some time."

"Young Bennet is over there, and if the men needed anything they
would send him for it," answered Silas. "I'll send some food and
water. Anything else?"

"Powder. We're nigh out of powder," replied the man addressed. "And
we might jes as well make ready fer a high old time. The red devils
hadn't been quiet all this last hour fer nothin'."

Silas passed along the narrow hallway which led from the bastion
into the main room of the block-house. As he turned the corner at
the head of the stairway he encountered a boy who was dragging
himself up the steps.

"Hello! Who's this? Why, Harry!" exclaimed Silas, grasping the boy
and drawing him into the room. Once in t