The brave boy drove off to the scene of action, the distant rattle of musketry, and at short intervals the loud roar of the cannon, making his heart throb with martial enthusiasm. The young preacher communed with his own heart on the unnatural conflict between his own kinsmen after the flesh and the compatriots of his spiritual adoption--and was still. The brave old veteran, shouldering the musket that had done good service at Brandywine and Germantown, patrolled the river road bounding the farm. As they approached the village of Queenston, Neville and Zenas found that a temporary lull in hostilities had taken place. The Americans had possession of the heights, and were strongly re- enforced from the Lewiston side of the river. The redcoats from Fort George--about four hundred men of the 41st regiment, together with a part of the 49th, which had already been in action--were about to march by a by-road apparently away from the scene of action. "Hello!" said Zenas to young Ensign Norton, of the 41st regiment, who was a frequent visitor at his father's house. "I don't understand this. You are not running away from these fellows are you? Why don't you drive the Yankees from that battery?" "We intend to, young Hotspur, but it would be madness to charge up that hill in face of those guns. We are to take them in flank, I suppose, and drive them over the cliff." "Where's Brock?" asked the boy, jealous of the fame of his hero, which he seemed to think compromised by this prudent counsel. "Have not you heard," said Norton, with something between a sigh and a sob? "He'll never lead us again. He lies in yonder house," pointing to a long, low, poor-looking dwelling-house on the left side of the road. "What! dead? killed--so soon?" cried the boy, turning white, and then flushing red, and unconsciously clenching his fists as he spoke. "Yes, Mister," said a war-bronzed soldier standing by, who looked doubly grim from the blood trickling down his powder-blackened cheek from a scalp wound received during the morning skirmish. "I stood anear him when he fell, an' God knows I'd rather the bullet had struck me; my fighting days will soon be over, anyhow. But we'll avenge his death afore the day is done. They call us the green tigers, them fellers do, an' there's not a man of us won't fight like a tiger robbed of her whelps, for not a man of us wouldn't 'a' died for the General." "To the right, wheel, forward march!" came the order from the Colonel, and the "green tigers" filed on with the grim resolve to conquer or to die. The militia, clad chiefly in homespun frieze, with flint-lock muskets and stout cartridge boxes at their belts, were drawn up at the roadside, and were being supplied with ammunition, previous to following the regulars.