With this compromise, the work went on. The corporal dug a trench four feet deep, encircling the “castle,” as happy as a lord the whole time; for this was not the first time he had been at such work, which he considered to be altogether in character, and suitable to his profession. No youthful engineer, fresh from the Point, that seat of military learning to which the republic is even more indebted for its signal successes in Mexico, than to the high military character of this population-no young aspirant for glory, fresh from this useful school, could have greater delight in laying out his first bastion, or counter-scarp, or glacis, than Corporal Flint enjoyed in fortifying Castle Meal. It will be remembered that this was the first occasion he was ever actually at the head of the engineering department Hitherto, it had been his fortune to follow; but now it had become his duty to lead. As no one else, of that party, had ever been employed in such a work on any previous occasion, the corporal did not affect to conceal the superior knowledge with which he was overflowing. Gershom he found a ready and active assistant; for, by this time, the whiskey was well out of him; and he toiled with the greater willingness, as he felt that the palisades would add to the security of his wife and sister. Neither did Parson Amen disdain to use the pick and shovel; for, while the missionary had the fullest reliance in the fact that the red men of that region were the descendants of the children of Israel, he regarded them as a portion of the chosen people who were living under the ban of the divine displeasure, and as more than usually influenced by those evil spirits, whom St. Paul mentions as the powers of the air. In a word, while the good missionary had all faith in the final conversion and restoration of these children of the forests, he did not overlook the facts of their present barbarity, and great propensity to scalp. He was not quite as efficient as Gershom, at this novel employment, but a certain inborn zeal rendered him both active and useful. As for the Indians, neither of them deigned to touch a tool. Pigeonswing had little opportunity for so doing, indeed, being usually, from the rising to the setting sun, out hunting for the support of the party; while Peter passed most of his time in ruminations and solitary walks. This last paid little attention to the work about the castle, either knowing it would, at any moment, by an act of treachery, be in his power to render all these precautions of no avail; or, relying on the amount of savage force that he knew was about to collect in the openings. Whenever he cast a glance on the progress of the work, it was with an eye of great indifference; once he even carried his duplicity so far, as to make a suggestion to the corporal, by means of which, as he himself expressed it, in his imperfect English--“Injin no get inside, to use knife and tomahawk.” This seeming indifference, on the part of Peter, did