be beaten, nay, to be destroyed, by a swarm of savages!"

"But don't forget the Frenchmen!" shouted Robert in reply. "They're
directing!"

"Which is no consolation to us," cried Stuart. He said something else,
but it was lost in the tremendous firing and yelling of the Indians,
who were now only a score of yards away from the devoted rear guard
that was doing its best to protect the flying and confused mass of
soldiers.

Robert discharged his bullet at a brown face and then, as he walked
backward, he tripped and fell over a root. He sprang up at once, but
in an instant a gigantic figure bounded out of the fire and smoke, and
Tandakora, uttering a fierce shout of triumph, circled his tomahawk
swiftly above his head, preparatory to the mortal blow. But Tayoga,
quick as lightning, hurled his pistol with all his might. It struck
the huge Ojibway on the head with such force that the tomahawk fell
from his hand, and he staggered back into the smoke.

"Tayoga, again I thank you!" cried Robert.

"You will do the same for me," said the Onondaga, and then they too
were lost in the smoke, as with the rear guard of Virginians they
followed the retreating army.

Robert and his comrades, swept on in the press, crossed the river with
the others and gained the farther shore unhurt. Willet looked back at
the woods, which still flamed with the hostile rifles, and shuddered.

"It's worse than anything of which I ever dreamed," he said. "Now the
tomahawk and the scalping knife will sweep the border from Canada to
Carolina."

The panic was stopped at last and the broken remnants of the army,
covered by the Virginians who understood the forest, began their
retreat. Braddock died the next day, his last words being, "We shall
know better how to deal with them another time." Washington, Orme,
Morris and the others carried the news of the great defeat to Virginia
and Pennsylvania, whence it was sent to England, to be received there
at first with incredulity, men saying that such a thing was
impossible. But England too was soon to be in mourning, because so
many of her bravest had fallen at the hands of an invisible foe in the
far American wilderness.

Robert, Willet and Tayoga followed the retreating army only a short
distance beyond the Monongahela. They saw that Grosvenor, Stuart and
Cabell had escaped with slight wounds, and, slipping quietly into the
forest, they circled about Fort Duquesne, seeing the lights where the
Indians