Without making too long a story, for it was nearly half an hour before we succeeded in getting our wounded comrade out from the narrow place into which he had crowded himself, and then only after having had the assistance of all the rest of our company, let it suffice to say that he had escaped from the fight at Jenkins’s Fort, drifted down the river after stopping twice on the western shore, until come to this stockade, where he arrived in the night before Colonel Zebulon Butler’s men had taken shelter there. Finding the fort abandoned, he crept into the shed as the most likely place of concealment, believing the savages were close on his heels, and thinking they would search every other building rather than that. Coming upon the depression of which I have spoken, he had crawled into it, dug away the earth with his hands while burrowing yet deeper, and gotten so far beneath the timbers that, owing to his wounds, he could not get back unaided. When we had the poor lad where Stephen Morley and Master Bartlett could attend to his wounds, which they did without delay, Miles Parker, too eager for information to take heed of the fact that the lad was so nearly exhausted it was cruel to force him into conversation, asked why he had not come out when Colonel Zebulon and his men were there. “I heard them when they entered,” Elias said, striving manfully against the pain in order to make the explanation. “I knew who they were, and, finding it impossible, because of this mangled arm, to get out of the hole, I cried again and again for help; but they, most like, remained in the blockhouse nearest the main gate and heard me not, or, if my voice did reach their ears, it alarmed them, even as Jonathan and Giles were frightened. My efforts to attract their attention must have thrown me into a delirium, for I became unconscious during a time, and, when my senses returned, the yells and cries of Indians could be heard on every hand.” “That was when they were destroying the settlement,” Giles March said half to himself, and Elias continued: “So I believed at the time, and felt certain the stockade would be given over to the flames, when I must be burned to death. Then it was that I contrived to get my knife from the belt and turn its point against my heart, that I might drive it in rather than suffer a painful death. But the moments passed without bringing further harm until it was as if the savages had departed, since which time I have been like one in a frightful dream, knowing well my condition at times, and again overcome by fever, as it were.” “I reckon it can do you no good to tell overly long stories just now,” Master Bartlett interrupted. “We shall have plenty of time to hear the tale when you are mended somewhat.” “The wonder of it is that he did not starve,” I said in a low tone to the old man, thinking that the greatest kindness we could do him would be to satisfy the pangs of hunger, and he, hearing my words, replied: