“In which case you wouldn’t have so good a show of sleeping with a full stomach this night, lad,” Master Bartlett said, grimly. “We could do our work without being seen, even though the Tories had had their sentinels on the stockade, which they didn’t. Giles is right about the feasting part of it, for, as I came away, it was possible to see that rum was being distributed generously, and a savage always expects to gorge himself at such a time.” “We brought away all that we could carry,” Giles continued. “I took as my share from the lodges a bag of meal; but when we were in the thicket once more and found this buck hanging up to season, I believed it was a good trade to swap corn-meal for deer. If any of you fellows think we ran our noses into danger, you are mistaken, for it was as safe as any pleasure excursion you ever heard about, although had we waited four and twenty hours before setting out, I question if Esther Hinchman would not have remained a prisoner with the Mohawks.” “And she may thank you for her release, Giles March,” I said, determined that he should have his full share of the credit. His cheeks reddened with pleasure, and he would have declared that he was not entitled to any praise if, at that moment, I had not startled the company by saying in astonishment, as my eye caught a glimpse of something moving amid the foliage: “There are white people coming this way,--women as well as children!” Every fellow leaped to the platform, and then we saw that which at first filled us with wonderment, but was afterward easily explained. Four men, two of whom were walking on crutches, six or eight women, all of whom carried burdens of some kind, and not less than a dozen children, the largest weighted down with what appeared to be provisions and household utensils, were coming toward us. “Refugees from nearabout the burnt lands, if I’m not mistaken,” Master Bartlett exclaimed, as he clambered up beside me. “And why have they come here?” I asked, in bewilderment. “It would have been safer for them to have gone to Forty Fort.” “I’m afraid, lad, their coming means that John Butler’s forces are advancing, and they have fled to the nearest fortified place.” There was little need for us to speculate very long as to why these people had come, for within five minutes they were all inside the fort, and we heard the pitiful story. Stephen Morley, a settler who had taken up land in what was known as the burnt district, some six miles away, was the only able-bodied man among the party, and he it was who told the tale. There were in that district, within a radius of perhaps five miles, six families. Four of the husbands were in the American army. Stephen Morley himself was a soldier, but had been given a three months’ furlough because of illness, and arrived home just as a large body of Indians suddenly appeared in the neighborhood.