n his red window cord, startling the echoes. Then
came the diffusive boom and crackle of the blunderbuss, and the doctor,
inwardly anathematizing Wilkinson, hurried his men on. They heard axes
at work, as if trees were being felled; it was the Captain and the
Richards at the barrier. No enemy appeared on the rocks, but pistol
shots warned them that there was collision on the road, and the doctor
called the second squad to wheel towards it. The dominie, on the left of
the first, saw what was going on below. Revolvers were emptied and clubs
brought into requisition. He could not load his old muzzle-loading piece
to save his life, but he knew single stick. Two men were tackling the
brave old colonel, while a third lay wounded at his horse's feet. The
dominie sped down to the road like a chamois, and threw himself upon the
man on the colonel's right, the dissipated farmer. He heard a shot, felt
a sharp pain in his left arm, but with his right hit the holder of the
pistol a skull cracker over the head, then fainted and fell to the
ground. His luckless muzzle-loader was never found. The colonel had
floored his antagonist on the left, and turned to behold the dominie's
pale face. Leaving the command to the doctor, he dismounted and put a
little old Bourbon out of a pocket flask into his lips, and then
proceeded to bandage the wound. Wilkinson had saved his life; he was a
hero, a grand, cultivated, sympathetic, chivalrous man, whom the colonel
loved as his own son. When he came to, were not the very first words he
uttered enquiries for Colonel Morton's own safety? Maguffin, having
felled his man, held his master's horse.

Squire Walker, Mr. Perrowne, and Bangs galloped on, the latter eager to
seize Rawdon. They and the infantry squads came almost simultaneously
upon the select encampment, which was simply a large stone-mason's yard,
full of grindstones in every state of preparation, and bordered by
half-a-dozen frame buildings, one of which, more pretentious than the
others, was evidently the dwelling-place of the head of the concern. Two
simple-looking men in mason's aprons stood in the doorway of another,
having retired thither when they heard the sound of firing. This was
evidently the boarding-house of the workmen, and an object of interest
to Ben Toner, who, with his friends Sullivan and Timotheus, pushed past
the two stonecutters, immediately thereafter arrested by Sergeant Terry,
and invaded the structure. Soon Ben reappe