shots without
discomfort."

"To what purpose?" I inquired.

"I hope at least that I have hit none of our own men," he answered with
a touch of humor. "I confess I am more handy with a quill than a musket.
I have friends in London, sir, who will not believe me when I relate my
adventures in this barbarous country. But, alas! I may not live to see
England again."

I thought this more than likely, but did not tell him so.

"Come, come, Mr. Burley!" I replied, "keep up your spirits; don't yield
to depression. You will be spared to stamp many a blue document--to
entangle scores of luckless litigants in the meshes of the law."

I clipped on without waiting to see how he took this sally, and went as
far as the northwest angle of the fort. Here I stopped to talk with some
comrades who were drinking hot coffee flavored with a dash of rum.

Close by, other men were watching alertly at the loopholes. Occasionally
they would fire at some partly exposed Indians, and then dodge back as a
straggling volley of bullets pelted the stockade. Over on the east side
muskets were cracking in the same desultory fashion. The storm showed no
signs of abating. On the contrary, the snow was falling more thickly and
in finer flakes, and a bitter wind was constantly heaping it in higher
drifts, and blowing it in blinding, eddying showers about the inclosure.

I was about to return to my post, warmed and strengthened by a pannikin
of coffee, when a couple of shots rang out. One of the very men to whom
I had been talking--a young Scotchman named Blair--reeled and fell
heavily, hit by a ball that had entered at a loophole. I bent over him,
and saw at once that he was badly hurt. He was shot in the left breast,
and blood was oozing from his lips.

"It's all up with me, Carew," he moaned. "Let me lie here."

"Not a bit of it," I replied. "You'll pull through, take my word for it.
But you must be in the doctor's hands without delay."

Three of us picked the wounded man up, and bore him across the yard to
the hospital. At the door I relinquished my share of the burden, for the
firing had suddenly recommenced so briskly that I feared the savages
were meditating a rush.

But the fusillade dwindled to a few shots before I was halfway to the
east side, and the next instant, as I was pushing along leisurely, I saw
a dark object looming out of the snow twenty feet to my right. It was
the figure of a woman. Her back was toward me, and she seemed to h