"No, lad, he ain't; but unless my ears deceived me, it was him give the party their orders. I seen young Godfrey Spencer sittin' by the fire. An' Simon Glass was there, as big as life, waitin' for the bullet that's in my pouch to reach his black heart. There's nine in the party--all British cavalrymen, except Glass--but they're wearin' plain clothes instead of uniforms. The horses are the same way--no brass nor polished leather fixin's." "I reckon they want to pass for Americans," said Evan Jones. "That's just it," assented Barnabas. "An' now look to your flints, men, an' your powder an' ball. I'm going to lead you straight agin' the enemy. We'll shin over the tree, and fall on 'em by surprise. If they expect us at all, they're countin' on our comin' round to the bridle-road by the ford, which is five hundred yards further up the creek." "We're six to nine, Barnabas," McNicol suggested in a dubious tone. "We're worth a dozen Britishers, man," stoutly declared Barnabas. "We'll have the first fire, an' that ought to drop five or six of the enemy. The rest will run--if I knows 'em right--and then we'll grab the horses. It's the horses we want most. They'll take us gallopin' over the bridle-road, and into Wyoming early in the morning." Barnabas had struck the right chord. The hope of reaching their imperiled families within a few hours was a stronger inducement to the men than vengeance for poor Lindsay. Without a dissenting voice they approved their leader's plan, and examined their loadings and flints. Five minutes later they were following Barnabas in single file through the thick wood, now cold and gray in the breaking light of dawn. Nathan alone was gloomy and sad. At every step he saw before his eyes a mental picture that made him shudder. "Godfrey will be there," he reflected. "He may kill me, or I may have to fire at him. Somebody else will likely shoot him if I don't. He is a Tory and an enemy, and he betrayed me that night in Philadelphia; but I can't forget that we were old friends. I must do my duty, though. And I will do it, come what may." He compressed his lips, and marched on resolutely. With a warning gesture Barnabas halted; and the men behind him, half hidden in the laurel scrub, shifted their muskets noiselessly, and peered past their leader with strained, intent faces. There was danger in the still air. Tragedy and death brooded over this dense woody spot in the mountainous solitudes of Pennsylvania. The brink of the chasm was three yards away--a chasm that dropped seventy feet, between narrow, hollowed-out walls of rock, to the deep and sluggish waters of the creek. Through the vistas of foliage and timber could be seen the trunk of the fallen pine, with many a bushy offshoot, that spanned the gorge from bank to bank. But there was no sound of enemy's voices on the farther side; no evidence of the camp save a curl of gray smoke drifting upward to the blue sky, now rosy-flushed with the first light of day.