sharply.

"Is there nothin' in your mind that we are bound to do, now the message
has been delivered?"

"Do you mean to aid Jacob?" I asked, as a sudden light began to dawn on
me.

"Ay, lad, all of that. Neither you nor I would have let him gone alone in
the hopeless task of rescuin' his father, had it not been that duty
demanded of us to keep our faces turned toward yonder fort. Now we have
done that which General Herkimer required, we can set out to fulfil our
duty toward the lad, an' this goin' back on the road to Oriskany is but
little more than we would be forced to do in order to gain the spot where
we parted with him, for I'm countin' that he was then near by the place
where his father is held prisoner."

I could have hugged the old man, but that he might have fancied I had
lost my senses.

When we parted with Jacob there was no thought in my mind that Sergeant
Corney had the slightest idea of joining in what was a most desperate
venture, and I even fancied he felt a certain sense of relief in having
such a good excuse for not sticking his nose into the Indian encampment.
But now I understood that all the while he held firm to the determination
to do whatsoever he might toward aiding Peter Sitz, and I began to feel
real affection for the noble old man.

Whether we might be able to find Jacob or not, and the chances were that
he had already been made prisoner, we could say to ourselves that the poor
lad was not deserted by us in his hour of need, and, if the worst
happened, it would be no slight satisfaction to us in after years.

The storm increased each moment, and we were soon wetted to the skin, but
hardly conscious of the discomfort because of the safety which this
downpour brought to us.

I had never given Sergeant Corney credit for any great knowledge of
woodcraft, because he came to us from over the seas where his life had
been spent fighting battles in the open, and could not be expected to cope
with the savage foe, as did our people who had always been accustomed to
the skulking methods of warfare practised by the redskins.

Now, however, I was forced to give him credit for being wiser than I in
the forest, since in the darkness and amid the tumult caused by the wind
and rain he made the detour as if a broad trail stretched out before him
under the sunlight, and we half-circled around the fortification, at the
distance of a mile or more, without varying, so far as could be told, a
single hair