I had no idea of the passage of time, but staggered on as best I could until Master Bartlett gave the word to halt, by saying: “I’m allowing, lads, that we need go no farther. If the Tories had followed us, we should have heard something from them by this time. Let’s sit down for the night, and Jonathan and I will thank the good God that Giles wasn’t as thick-headed as we, else all of us would be in the stockade awaiting certain capture.” Under ordinary circumstances I would not have considered it a hardship to spend one night, or a dozen of them for that matter, in the woods, especially while the weather was so warm that one needed no covering; but now, weak from lack of food, and wearied with exertion and excitement, I felt as if our plight was indeed sad when we stretched ourselves out at the foot of a huge tree, with the idea of trying to gain some repose. As when we were suffering with thirst, Master Bartlett tried to beguile the time by telling of his experiences while suffering even greater hardships than we were then striving to endure in silence, but I could give no heed to his words. If the Tories had made plans to seek sport by hunting wretched fugitives who had been driven by their wolfish allies from Fort Jenkins, and could deliberately wait around on the river for them to come down, as does the hunter for the deer to visit the salt-lick, then might we with a certainty know that more than one of those who fled from the stockade had been taken, and, being taken by such a crew, would most likely have been turned over to the tender mercies of the Indians. Although I had good reason to believe that Elias Shendle had been captured, if indeed he was not killed outright during the fight, I strove not to dwell upon such a possibility. Taking one’s bodily condition, together with the grief in his heart because of the possible fate of others, it was difficult to bear up under what might at another time have been borne with something like fortitude, and the tears were near to overflowing my eyelids when Giles March said, hopefully: “I’m counting that two hours’ work to-morrow will bring us to Forty Fort. After knowing what we do about Fort Ogden, let us agree that the stockade at Wilkesbarre has been abandoned, and say that we must gain the appointed rendezvous before finding ourselves among friends. Now think it over. A tramp of not more than two hours at the most, then a swim across the river, and perhaps another hour’s walk, after which we are where we can rest and eat,--at least until John Butler takes it into his head to make an attack.” It was such talk as that which I needed to hearten me, for I am free to confess that then my courage was well-nigh gone, and, putting aside with an effort all the forebodings which had come over me since we halted, I discussed with Giles and Master Bartlett the course which we should pursue when day dawned.