Dark forms were leaping through the fields, on the hill-sides; and all adown the slopes that conducted to the valley, armed savages were seen pouring madly forward, on their path of destruction and vengeance. Behind them, the brand and the knife had been already used; for the log tenement, the stacks and the out-buildings of Reuben Ring, and of several others who dwelt in the skirts of the settlement, were sending forth clouds of murky smoke, in which forked and angry flames were already flashing fiercely. But danger most pressed still nearer. A long line of fierce warriors was even in the meadows; and in no direction could the eye be turned, that it did not meet with the appalling proof that the village was completely surrounded by an overwhelming superiority of force. "To the garrison!" shouted some of the foremost of those who first saw the nature and imminency of the danger, pressing forward themselves in the direction of the fortified house. "To the garrison, or we are lost!" "Hold!" exclaimed that voice which was so strange to the ears of most of those who heard it, but which spoke in a manner that by its compass and firmness commanded obedience. "With this mad disorder, we are truly lost! Let Captain Content Heathcote come to my councils." Notwithstanding the tumult and confusion which had now in truth begun to rage fearfully around him, the quiet and self-restrained individual to whom the legal and perhaps moral right to command belonged, had lost none of his customary composure. It was plain, by the look of powerful amazement with which he had at first regarded the stranger, on his sudden interruption of the service, and by the glances of secret intelligence and of recognition they exchanged, that they had met before. But this was no time for greetings or explanations, nor was that a scene in which to waste the precious moments in useless contests about opinions. "I am here," said he who was thus called for; "ready to lead whither thy prudence and experience shall point the way." "Speak to the people, and separate the combatants in three bodies of equal strength. One shall press forward to the meadows, and beat back the savage, ere he encircle the palisadoed house; the second shall proceed with the feeble and tender, in their flight to its covers; and with the third--but thou knowest that which I would do with the third Hasten, or we lose all by tardiness."