no vera mindful of that, I'm thinking."

"Will ye hush, ye ill-omened hound!" cried Cowan, angrily. "Pitch him in
the crick, Mac!"

Tom was diverted from this duty by a loud quarrel between Captain Harrod
and five men of the company who wanted scout duty, and on the heels of
that came another turmoil occasioned by Cowan's dropping my drum into the
water. While he and McCann and Tom were fishing it out, Colonel Clark
himself appeared, quelled the mutiny that Harrod had on his hands, and
bade the men sternly to get into ranks.

"What foolishness is this?" he said, eying the dripping drum.

"Sure, Colonel," said McCann, swinging it on his back, "we'd have no
heart in us at Kaskasky widout the rattle of it in our ears. Bill Cowan
and me will not be feeling the heft of it bechune us."

"Get into ranks," said the Colonel, amusement struggling with the anger
in his face as he turned on his heel. His wisdom well knew when to humor
a man, and when to chastise.

"Arrah," said Terence, as he took his place, "I'd as soon l'ave me gun
behind as Davy and the dhrum."

Methinks I can see now, as I write, the long file of woodsmen with their
swinging stride, planting one foot before the other, even as the Indian
himself threaded the wilderness. Though my legs were short, I had both
sinew and training, and now I was at one end of the line and now at the
other. And often with a laugh some giant would hand his gun to a
neighbor, swing me to his shoulder, and so give me a lift for a weary
mile or two; and perchance whisper to me to put down my hand into the
wallet of his shirt, where I would find a choice morsel which he had
saved for his supper. Sometimes I trotted beside the Colonel himself,
listening as he talked to this man or that, and thus I got the gravest
notion of the daring of this undertaking, and of the dangers ahead of us.
This north country was infested with Indians, allies of the English and
friends of the French their subjects; and the fact was never for an
instant absent from our minds that our little band might at any moment
run into a thousand warriors, be overpowered and massacred; or, worst of
all, that our coming might have been heralded to Kaskaskia.

For three days we marched in the green shade of the primeval wood, nor
saw the sky save in blue patches here and there. Again we toiled for
hours through the coffee-colored waters of the swamps. But the third
day brought us to the first of those strange clearin