less
you, Davy," ere he seized it with a great hand and began to eat in
wolfish bites, his Deckard always on the watch the while.

There was no sleep in the village. All night long, while the
rifles sputtered, the villagers in their capotes--men, women, and
children--huddled around the fires. The young men of the militia begged
Clark to allow them to fight, and to keep them well affected he sent
some here and there amongst our lines. For our Colonel's strength
was not counted by rifles or men alone: he fought with his brain. As
Hamilton, the Hair Buyer, made his rounds, he believed the town to be in
possession of a horde of Kentuckians. Shouts, war-whoops, and bursts of
laughter went up from behind the town. Surely a great force was there,
a small part of which had been sent to play with him and his men. On the
fighting line, when there was a lull, our backwoodsmen stood up behind
their trees and cursed the enemy roundly, and often by these taunts
persuaded the furious gunners to open their ports and fire their cannon.
Woe be to him that showed an arm or a shoulder! Though a casement be
lifted ever so warily, a dozen balls would fly into it. And at length,
when some of the besieged had died in their anger, the ports were opened
no more. It was then our sharpshooters crept up boldly to within thirty
yards of them--nay, it seemed as if they lay under the very walls of the
fort. And through the night the figure of the Colonel himself was often
seen amongst them, praising their markmanship, pleading with every man
not to expose himself without cause. He spied me where I had wormed
myself behind the foot-board of a picket fence beneath the cannon-port
of a blockhouse. It was during one of the breathing spaces.

"What's this?" said he to Cowan, sharply, feeling me with his foot.

"I reckon it's Davy, sir," said my friend, somewhat sheepishly. "We
can't do nothin' with him. He's been up and down the line twenty times
this night."

"What doing?" says the Colonel.

"Bread and powder and bullets," answered Bill.

"But that's all over," says Clark.

"He's the very devil to pry," answered Bill. "The first we know he'll be
into the fort under the logs."

"Or between them," says Clark, with a glance at the open palings. "Come
here, Davy."

I followed him, dodging between the houses, and when we had got off the
line he took me by the two shoulders from behind.

"You little rascal," said he, shaking me, "how am I to look ou