“Their forces no man can number,” said the strange herald. “They are like the sands of the sea-shore. But I must go. I am appointed to deliver my message before every door in the forest, that the Lord’s chosen may flee from the wrath to come.” “Then go, Johnny. I should not have detained you a minute. Yours is an errand of mercy. I have a duty to perform this night. Go, Johnny; tell them all of the swoop of the red eagles; and tell them that Wolf Cap says, ‘Fly to the block-houses without delay!’” The pioneer hero started forward, but paused after taking a step, and drew the portion of an old volume from his bosom. “Here news right fresh from heaven,” he said, and he tore a leaf from the book and handed it to the trapper. It was a leaf from Swedenborg’s writings, for Johnny Appleseed—Jonathan Chapman—is no myth, and he was a true disciple of the Swedish seer. Having accomplished his duty, the strange man, clad in nothing save a garment fashioned from a coffee sack, and bearing a long distaff, started off to spread dismay throughout the fire-lands. “So Hull has surrendered,” muttered Wolf-Cap through clenched lips, as he turned into the cabin again. “I know it was a cowardly affair, for Detroit was proof against ten thousand foes; but Hull was the wrong man in the right place. I know it; I told the soldiers so when I war there not long ago. These frontiers hev got to be desolated now, through the cowardice of one man,” the lone trapper continued, busying himself with preparations for a night journey. “Our block-houses are poor excuses for bulwarks; but we must get the women and children in them as quickly as possible.” He donned his hunting accouterments and the wolf-skin cap which had given him the _sobriquet_ that entitles our romance, and replenished the fire. “I’ll leave you to keep house, Dick,” he said, addressing the dog. “I’ll be back about daybreak. Now old fellow do your duty, and don’t let a sneakin’ red-skin over this portal.” He patted the dog’s shaggy back, barricaded the door, and made his exit from the cabin, by the roof. “I’m pretty sure that Johnny missed ’em,” he said, pausing for a moment beside the cabin and communing with himself. “He came down the river, and they are too far to his left. Yes, I guess he missed ’em.” The last word still quivered his lips when he started in a north-easterly direction, leaving the river to his left. A well-defined trail stretched before him, and he walked rapidly through the moonlit forest, trailing his long-barreled rifle at his side. It was a night in August, 1812, and, as not a breath of wind was stirring, the heat was oppressive. Once or twice the hunter started a deer from the weed-fringed margin of some forest stream, or frightened a coyote from his feast of freshly-slain bird. Suddenly he paused and listened to a silver voice, soaring skyward far away.