their friend and ally time out of mind. The Onondagas held off, neutral. The Oneidas and Tuscaroras, among whom Mr. Kirkland was missionary, aided the patriots when they could, because he wished it, but would not take the war-path. There were white loyalists, too, as well as red, on that far frontier. Sir John Johnson was their leader. Their regiment of Royal Greens, together with John Butler’s Tory rangers, constituted the bulk of St. Leger’s motley force of seventeen hundred, red men and white. Scottish highlanders, stubborn Englishmen hot against the revolution, and restless Irishmen, for the nonce on the side of authority, filled their ranks. [Illustration: SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON] [Illustration: SIR JOHN JOHNSON] [Illustration: JOSEPH BRANT] [Illustration: PETER GANSEVOORT] But even there, in Sir William Johnson’s one-time kingdom, enemies of King and Parliament mustered stronger yet, and showed quicker concert, freer, more instant union than the Tories. There were Dutch there, and Germans and Scots-Irish, who recked nothing of the older ties that had bound them when it came to the question whether they should yield in their own affairs to masters over sea. Peter Gansevoort commanded the little garrison at Stanwix; Nicholas Herkimer brought eight hundred men to his succor. Brant and Johnson trapped the stout-hearted German in a deadly ambush close by Oriskany as he came; but he beat them off. While that heroic struggle went forward there in the close ravine the hot morning through (August 6, 1777), Gansevoort made sally and sacked Sir John’s camp. Herkimer could come no further; but there came, instead, rumors that Burgoyne was foiled and taken and the whole American army on the road to Stanwix. It was only Benedict Arnold, with twelve hundred Massachusetts volunteers; but the rumors they industriously sent ahead of them carried the panic they had planned, and when they came there was no army to meet. St. Leger’s men were in full flight to Oswego, the very Indians who had been their allies harrying them as they went, in mere wanton savagery and disaffection.