He kept his eyes on the finished stockade and the great chimney, wearing majestically its floating plume of smoke.

" Comfortable as rock fireplace and stockade made the cabin now, the Colonel had been feeling all that morning that the official House-Warming was fore-doomed to failure.

An Indian appeared from round the stockade; he was still staring up at the stone chimney.

As we left the stockade I noted the row of Meebaw scalps hanging, grim and bloody, from the poles.

The supplies we had carried were all but finished by what we ate after the stockade was completed.

Suddenly a firebrand leaped from farther up the hill, and flew in a wide curve into the middle of the stockade.

In a tangle of duties a man must seize the solitary clear one, and there could be no doubt of what mine was, I must try for the Tidewater, and I must try alone, Shalah had the best chance to get through, but without Shalah the stockade was no sort of refuge.

"And leave the stockade defenceless," I cried.

There will be no more fighting at the stockade.

Then he told me of what had befallen at the stockade.

No living thing will come near the stockade save the wild beasts of the forest.

With them came news of the rout of the Cherokees, who had been beaten by Nicholson's militia in Stafford county and driven down the long line of the Border, paying toll to every stockade.

" "What portion of the force is on duty in the stockade?"

"Yonder Britishers and renegades are but holding our attention in order to give Thayendanega's wolves a chance to scale the stockade," he said, hurriedly.

I wondered why it was that Colonel Gansevoort delayed in the coming, and could see, without looking in any direction save at my foe, that the number of savages inside the stockade was increasing each moment.

By this time I dare venture to say no less than two hundred of the howling demons had scaled the stockade, and we who were defending this weakest portion of the fortification were pressed back and back until we stood massed against that opening which gave entrance to the main fortification.

" He had hardly more than ceased speaking when a great uproar could be heard from the distance, and, without turning my head, I understood that the British regulars and the Johnson Greens were pressing the attack on the west and the front, in order to hold our men at the walls that we might not be able to regain possession of the stockade.

How long we struggled there hand to hand, stumbling now over the lifeless forms of our comrades, and again finding our way checked by the dead bodies of the savages, I cannot say; but certain it is that we finally drove the last of the hated foe over the stockade, and gave Thayendanega's boasting braves such a lesson as they would not need to have repeated for many days.

We buried our comrades in the horn-works, just under the stockade they had defended so gallantly, and threw over the fence of logs fifty-two of Thayendanega's wolves who would take no further part in murder and rapine.

"Out through the horn-works, an' over the stockade.

Not until a full hour had passed could Reuben Cox tell his story, and even then he was in such a sorry plight that it was possible for him to speak only a moment at a time; but before morning camebefore we were able to do very much toward relieving his sufferingswe had a fairly good account of all that had occurred from the moment the five foolish men clambered over the stockade until our cannon had done its work of mercy.

As he had already said, we were to scale the stockade in the horn-works, and then, making a détour to the westward, gain the cover of such shelter as might be found on the high lands, working well toward the ruins of Fort Newport before trying to strike across to and behind the line of earthworks which St. Leger had caused to be thrown up early in the siege.

THE TAKING OF THE STOCKADE XXXVII.

Bathing her face and throat in cold water, and hastily catching her beautiful light hair under a cap, she slipped down stairs and out past the stockade to the point.

Over in the high log stockade wherein the Company's sledge animals were confined, other wolf-dogs howled mournfully, desolated at missing the fun.