cavalcade.

As Forrester had conjectured, the command of the party, such as it was,
was assigned to the landlord. There might have been something like forty
or fifty men in all, the better portion of them mounted and well
armed--some few on foot struggling to keep pace with the riders--all in
high spirits, and indignant at the invasion of what they considered
their own. These, however, were not all hunters of the precious metal,
and many of them, indeed, as the reader has by this time readily
conjectured, carried on a business of very mixed complexion. The whole
village--blacksmith, grocer, baker, and clothier included, turned out
_en masse_, upon the occasion; for, with an indisputable position in
political economy, deriving their gains directly or indirectly from this
pursuit, the cause was, in fact, a cause in common.

The scene of operations, in view of which they had now come, had to the
eye all the appearance of a moderate encampment. The intruding force had
done the business completely. They had made a full transfer, from their
old to their new quarters, of bag and baggage; and had possessed
themselves of all the log-houses in and about the disputed region. Their
fires were in full heat, to use the frontier phrase, and the water was
hissing in their kettles, and the dry thorns crackling under the pot.
Never had usurpers made themselves more perfectly at home; and the rage
of the old incumbents was, of course, duly heightened at a prospect of
so much ease and felicity enjoyed at their expense.

The enemy were about equal in point of number with those whom they had
so rudely dispossessed. They had, however, in addition to their
disposable force, their entire assemblage of wives, children, slaves,
and dependants, cattle and horses, enough, as Forrester bitterly
remarked, "to breed a famine in the land." They had evidently settled
themselves _for life_, and the ousted party, conscious of the fact,
prepared for the _dernier_ resort. Everything on the part of the
usurpers indicated a perfect state of preparedness for an issue which
they never doubted would be made; and all the useless baggage,
interspersed freely with rocks and fallen trees, had been well-employed
in increasing the strength of a position for which, such an object
considered, nature had already done much. The defences, as they now
stood, precluded all chance of success from an attack by mounted men,
unless the force so employed were overwhelming. The