"Down towards the sea," Jack answered, "to pick up stragglers who land to plunder.

At first a nominal peace prevailed, and for two days the blacks followed the expedition closely, seeking to cut off any stragglers, and rendered the out-roving work of minding and collecting the cattle and horses one of considerable risk.

As soon as Pierre was informed of the circumstance, he eagerly issued an order to collect the stragglers without delay, and at every hazard.

And so the desultory talk rambled on, the little group growing larger by degrees as the approaching luncheon hour brought back the stragglers, and with them Olly, trotting contentedly along, clinging to Halloway's hand, meek as any lamb.

The next child, not a little displeased with such disorderly movements, repeatedly seized the straggler by the frock, and pulled her into the ranks; but finally despaired of reducing her to subordination.

Some of our folks with carts went ahead of the team, for where the roads were good they could out-travel oxen; but we constantly overtook stragglers, some with carts, some without, who had been unable to keep pace with the body of the company.

The market place, which yesterday was full of swarming life, and sent forth a confused uproar, was deserted and dumbnot a straggler was to be seen of all the multitude.

The main body of the troops struggled on, leaving these stragglers to follow when they could, and on the morning of the next day we reached Great Meadows, weak, trembling, and exhausted.

In many places they fell upon the troops of Hannibal when out on foraging excursions, availing themselves of the opportunity, and both harassing their march and intercepting the stragglers.

The Captain made no movement, had no thought to join these stragglers.

He endeavours to surprise us, to carry off our patroles, and to kill our stragglers".

When the dozen or more that formed the swarm were thus got rid of, Jack would carefully dig out the nest and eat first the honey, next the grubs and wax, and last of all the bees he had killed, champing his jaws like a little Pig at a trough, while his long red, snaky tongue was ever busy lashing the stragglers into his greedy maw.

They do not like stragglers even to inspect the burial place.

Some ill-dressed, loafing stragglers on the wharf drew near Sylvia with an indolent curiosity.

There was a gang of young ruffians, street boys, who used to hang around the school gates and maltreat the stragglers and even the boys in the yard, if the gate was left open, and I remember one day three or four of them invading the school-yard after I had dismissed the boys to go upstairs at the end of the intermission, thinking that they would have a fine game with the monitor.

"She can't be expected to see what a wretched plight she has got herself into by marrying this straggler from nobody knows where.

We journeyed on all day by a road I had never been before, my attendants evidently taking by-paths to avoid meeting stragglers or runaways.

I saw no people within the village, and observed merely a few stragglers about the fields.

[Illustration: "Three or four hundred Indians were dancing wildly around a huge fire"] How long that slow progress continued I cannot rightly say; but it seemed to me as if the morning was near at hand when we were arrived, having miraculously passed such stragglers, scouts, or sentinels as might have been in the vicinity, at a point where we could have a view of this particular portion of the encampment.

Still, we were nearing Fort Duquesne, and the Indians, set on by the French, began to harass us, and killed and scalped a straggler now and then, always evading pursuit.

The Indians were hovering around the camp, and occasionally shot at and wounded stragglers, or attempted to drive off the pack-horses.

Thither poor Harry and his companions rode, stopping stragglers, asking news, giving money, getting from one and all the same gloomy tale.

Delafield thought it could not absorb many more Negroes, but before the exodus movement subsided the stragglers who had turned aside at Delafield had more than doubled the Negro population of the town.

Chambers' men had swept aside the stragglers, and spread out into battle lines, the gray regiments massing mostly to the right of the pike, but with heavy fringe of cavalry extending past us as far as the ravine.

I must unravel every golden hair Upon the brow of Night for what I seek, Lift every straggler from its moony lair, Lest too the star should haply linger there, Unnoted by mine eyes so faint and weak.