urnish
occupation for his time. Never a day passed without his praying ardently
for an attack from the enemy; any alternative, any reverse, had been a
blessing compared with his present life. No such spirit, however, seemed
to animate the Yankee troops; not a soldier was to be seen for miles
around, and every straggler that passed the Fort concurred in saying that
the Americans were not within four day's march of the frontier.

Weeks passed over, and the same state of things remaining unchanged,
O'Flaherty gradually relaxed some of his strictness as to duty; small
foraging parties of three and four being daily permitted to leave the
Fort for a few hours, to which they usually returned laden with wild
turkeys and fish--both being found in great abundance near them.

Such was the life of the little garrison for two or three long summer
months--each day so resembling its fellow, that no difference could be
found.

As to how the war was faring, or what the aspect of affairs might be,
they absolutely knew nothing. Newspapers never reached them; and whether
from having so much occupation at head-quarters, or that the difficulty
of sending letters prevented, their friends never wrote a line; and thus
they jogged on, a very vegetable existence, till thought at last was
stagnating in their brains, and O'Flaherty half envied his companion's
resource in the spirit flask.

Such was the state of affairs at the Fort, when one evening O'Flaherty
appeared to pace the little rampart that looked towards Lake Ontario,
with an appearance of anxiety and impatience strangely at variance with
his daily phlegmatic look. It seemed that the corporal's party he had
despatched that morning to forage, near the "Falls," had not returned,
and already were four hours later than their time away.

Every imaginable mode of accounting for their absence suggested itself to
his mind. Sometimes he feared that they had been attacked by the Indian
hunters, who were far from favourably disposed towards their poaching
neighbours. Then, again, it might be merely that they had missed their
track in the forest; or could it be that they had ventured to reach Goat
Island in a canoe, and had been carried down the rapids. Such were the
torturing doubts that passed as some shrill squirrel, or hoarse night owl
pierced the air with a cry, and then all was silent again. While thus
the hours went slowly by, his attention was attracted by a bright light
in the s