He was as fleet as a stag, and perceiving that they were not likely soon to overtake, the pursuers discharged their rifles after him, but luckily without effect. The chase was thus continued from eleven till three o'clock--Elerson using every device and stratagem to elude or deceive the Indians, but they holding him close. At length, having gained a moment to breathe, an Indian started up in his front. Drawing up his rifle to clear the passage in that direction, the whiz of a bullet fleshing his side, and the crack of a rifle, from another point, taught him that delays were particularly dangerous at that spot. The Indian in front, however, had disappeared on his presenting his rifle, and Elerson again darted forward. His wounded side bled a little, though not enough to weaken him. Having crossed a ridge, he paused a moment in the valley beyond, to slake his thirst--his mouth being parched, and himself almost fainting. On rising from the brook, the head of one of his pursuers peeped over the crest of the hill. He raised his rifle, but such was his exhaustion that he could not hold it steady. A minute more, and he would have been in the power of the savage. Raising his rifle again, and steadying it by the side of a tree, he brought the savage tumbling headlong down the hill. In the next moment his trusty rifle was re-loaded and primed, and in the next the whole group of his pursuers came rushing over the ridge. He again supposed his minutes were numbered; but being partly sheltered by the trunk of a huge hemlock, they saw not him, but only the body of their fallen comrade yet quivering in the agonies of death. Drawing in a circle about the body of their companion, they raised the death wail; and as they paused, Elerson made another effort to fly. Before they resumed the pursuit, he had succeeded in burying himself in a dark thicket of hemlocks, where he found the hollow trunk of a tree, into which he crept. Here he lay ensconced two full days, without food or dressings for his wound. On the third day he backed out of "the loop-hole of his retreat," but knew not which way to proceed--not discerning the points of the compass. In the course of two or three miles, however, he came to a clearing, and found himself at Cobleskill--having, during his recent chase, run over hill and dale, bog, brook, and fen, upward of twenty-five miles.