We were now well beyond the last civilized habitation in the Valley of the Mohawk, and we encamped that night above the bank of a little rivulet that crossed the highway some four miles to the east of Fort Stanwix. Tulp and the Dutchman, Barent Coppernol, whom Mr. Cross had brought along, partially unpacked the cart, and set to with their axes. Soon there had been constructed a shelter for us, half canvas, half logs and brush, under a big beech-tree which stood half-way up the western incline from the brook, and canopied with its low boughs a smooth surface of clear ground. We had supper here, and then four huge night-fires were built as an outer wall of defence, and Barent went to sleep, while young Tulp, crouching and crooning by the blaze, began his portion of the dreary watch to keep up the fires. We lay awake for a long time on our bed of hemlock twigs and brake, well wrapped up, our heads close to the beech-trunk, our knees raised to keep the fierce heat of the flames from our faces. From time to time we heard the barking of the wolves, now distant, now uncomfortably near. When the moon came up, much later, the woods seemed alive with strange vocal noises and ominous rustlings in the leaves and brakes. It was my London companion's first night in the open wilderness; but while he was very acute to note new sounds and inquire their origin, he seemed to be in no degree nervous. We talked of many things, more particularly, I remember, of what Herkimer had said at breakfast. And it is a very remarkable thing that, as we talked thus of the German merchant-farmer and his politics, we were lying on the very spot where, five years later, I was to behold him sitting, wounded but imperturbable, smoking his pipe and giving orders of battle, under the most hellish rain of bullets from which man ever shrank affrighted. And the tranquil moon above us was to look down again upon this little vale, and turn livid to see its marsh and swale choked with fresh corpses, and its brook rippling red with blood. And the very wolves we heard snapping and baying in the thicket were to raise a ghastly halloo, here among these same echoes, as they feasted on the flesh of my friends and comrades. We did not guess this fearsome future, but instead lay peacefully, contentedly under the leaves, with the balmy softness of the firs in the air we breathed, and the flaming firelight in our eyes. Perhaps lank, uncouth Barent Coppernol may have dreamed of it, as he snored by the outer heap of blazing logs. If so, did he, as in prophecy, see his own form, with cleft skull, stretched on the hill-side?