re alone."

"What would you have him do?" muttered the woman.

"Do?" repeated Dorothy. "He can do one thing or the other--join his
regiment and take his family to the district fort, or stay at home and
care for you and the farm. These alarms are all wrong--your men are
either soldiers or farmers; they cannot be both unless they live close
enough to the forts. Tell Mr. Schell that Francy McCraw and his riders
are in the forest, and that the Brandt-Meester of Balston saw a Mohawk
smoke-signal on the mountain behind Mayfield."

The woman folded her bony arms in her apron, cast one tragic glance at
her children, then faced us again, hollow-eyed but undaunted.

"My man is with Stoner's scout," she said, with dull pride.

"Then you must go to the block-house," began Dorothy, but the woman
pointed to the fields, shaking her head.

"We shall build a block-house here," she said, stubbornly. "We cannot
leave our corn. We must eat, Mistress Varick. My man is too poor to be a
Provincial soldier, too brave to refuse a militia call--"

She choked, rubbed her eyes, and bent her stern gaze on the hills once
more. Presently we rode on, and, turning in my saddle, I saw her
standing as we had left her, gaunt, rigid, staring steadily at the
dreaded heights in the northwest.

As we galloped, cultivated fields and orchards became rarer; here and
there, it is true, some cabin stood on a half-cleared hill-side, and we
even passed one or two substantial houses on the flat ridge to the east,
but long, solid stretches of forest intervened, and presently we left
the highway and wheeled into a cool wood-road bordered on either side by
the forest.

"Here we find our first landmark," said Dorothy, drawing bridle.

A white triangle glimmered, cut in the bark of an enormous pine; and my
cousin rode up to the tree and patted the bark with her little hand. On
the triangle somebody had cut a V and painted it black.

"This is a boundary mark," said Dorothy. "The Mohawks claim the forest
to the east; ride around and you will see their sign."

I guided my horse around the huge, straight trunk. An oval blaze scarred
it and on the wood was painted a red wolf.

"It's the wolf-clan, Brant's own clan of the Mohawk nation," she called
out to me. "Follow me, cousin." And she dashed off down the wood-road, I
galloping behind, leaping windfalls, gullies, and the shallow forest
brooks that crossed our way. The road narrowed to a trodden trail; the
trail