But now the unforeseen was upon him, the fatally uncovenanted event for which none can prepare. An express had come after nightfall from over the mountains, bringing, besides the mail, rumors of another Indian outbreak on the South Carolina frontier. A number of settlers had been massacred, and the perpetrators of the deed had escaped unpunished. Stuart, charging the man to say nothing of his news to blight the Christmas festivities--since the reports might not be true--sent him to make merry among the soldiers. Anxiety had taken possession of that stout heart of Stuart's. When the settlers had begun to gather to the ball, the earliest arrivals brought no suggestion of difficulty. The next comers, however, had seen straggling bands of Indians across the river, but they were mentioned casually and with no sense of premonition. The guests to enter last had been somewhat surprised to notice numbers of canoes at the landing-place, and presently Captain Stuart was called aside by the officer of the day, who stated that in making the rounds he had learned that the sentinel at the gate had reported having observed bands of Indians lurking about on the edge of the woods, and that quite a number had come, singly and in groups, to the gate to demand admission. The gathering of the white people had roused their attention evidently. They had always held the cannon-mounted fort and the presence of the soldiery as a menace, and they now sought to discern what this unprecedented assemblage might portend. If their entrance were resisted, they who so often frequented the place, it was obviously inimical to them. They had heard--for the transmission of news among the Indians was incredibly swift--of the massacres on the frontier and feared some effort at reprisal. The scanty numbers of the garrison invited their blood-thirsty rapacity, but they were awed by the cannon, and although entertaining vague ideas concerning the management and scope of artillery, realized its terrible potencies. Perhaps it was with some idea of forcing an entrance by surprise--that they might be within the walls of the fort and out of the range of the guns at this critical juncture of the massing of the forces of the settlers and the garrison--that a party of thirty or forty Cherokees suddenly rushed past the sentinel on the counterscarp, who had hardly time to level his firelock and to call lustily on the guard. The guard at once turning out, the soldiers met the onset of the savages at the gate and bore them back with the bayonet. There was the sudden, quick iterative tramp on the frozen ground of a man running at full speed, and as Stuart dashed through the sally-port he called out "Bar the gates! Bar the gates!" in a wild, imperative voice.