Here, being as good a place as any, I may say frankly that I never fully understood this side of Ephraim Yeates. Like all the hardy borderers, he was a fighter by instinct and inclination; and I can bear him witness that when he smote the "Amalekites," as he would call them--red skin or red coat--he smote them hip and thigh, and was as ruthless as that British Captain Turnbull who slew the wounded. Yet withal, on the very edge of battle, or mayhap fair in the midst of it, he was like to fall upon his knees to pray most fervently; though, as I have hinted, his prayers were like his blows--of the biting sort, full of Scriptural anathema upon the enemy. Richard Jennifer, carelessly profane as all men were in that most godless day, would say 'twas the old borderer's way of swearing; that since he left out the oaths in common speech,--as, truly, he did,--he would fetch up the arrears and wipe out the score in one fell blast upon his knees. Be this as it may, he was a good man and a true, as I have said; and his warlike supplication that our blades should be as the sword of the Lord and of Gideon in the coming onfall was no whit out of place. It wanted yet a full hour of midnight when Richard began again to plead piteously for instant action. Yeates thought it still over-early; but when Jennifer pressed him hard the old borderer left the casting vote to me. "What say ye, Cap'n John? Your'n will be the next oldest head, and I reckon it hain't been turned plumb foolish rampaging crazy by this here purty gal o' Gilbert Stair's." Now you have read thus far in my poor tale to little purpose if you have not yet discovered the major weakness of an old campaigner, which is to weigh and measure all the chances, holding it to the full as culpable to strike too soon as too late. This weakness was mine, and in that evil moment I gave my vote for further waiting, arguing sapiently that my old field-marshal would never set a night assault afoot till well on toward the dawn. Jennifer heard me through and yielded, perforce, though with little good-will. "I can not compass it alone, or, by the gods, I'd go!" he asserted, angrily. "Mark you, John Ireton, this delay is a thing you'll rue whilst you live. Your cold-cut pros and cons mouth well enough, and I'm no soldier-lawyer to argue them down. But something better than your damnable reasons tells me that the hour has struck--that these very present seconds are priceless." Whereupon he flung himself face down in the grass and would not speak again until the waiting time was fully over and Yeates gave the word to fall in line for the advance. Having learned the lay of the land in his earlier reconnaissance, the old borderer shortened the distance for us by guiding us across the neck of a horseshoe bend in the stream; and a half-hour's blind groping through the forest fetched us out upon the river bank again, this time precisely opposite the Indians' lodge fire on the other side.