heir attention this way. I'm ordered to evacuate,
for the post is considered too weak to hold."

"How soon do you march?"

"I don't march at all. I stay here. I'm going to disobey orders."

"If you're going to disobey orders, you have good reason for doing so."

"I have. It was too late to retreat. I'm going to fight. I hear,
Lazarre, you know how to handle Indians in the French way."

"My dear Croghan, you insinuate the American way may be better."

"It is, on the western border. It may not be on the northern."

"Then you would not have advised my attempting the Indians here?"

"I shouldn't have discouraged it. When I got the secret order, I said:
'Bring the French--bring the missionaries--bring anything that will cut
the comb of Tecumseh!'"

"The missionaries and the French like being classed with--anything," I
said.

"We're Americans here," Croghan laughed. "The dauphin may have to fight
in the ditch with the rest of us."

"The dauphin is an American too, and used to scars, as you know. Can you
give me any news from Green Bay in the Wisconsin country?"

"I was ordered to Green Bay last year to see if anything could be done
with old Fort Edward Augustus."

"Does my Holland court-lady live there?"

"Not now," he answered soberly. "She's dead."

"That's bad," I said, thinking of lost opportunities.

"Is pretty Annabel de Chaumont ever coming back from France?"

"Not now, she's married."

"That's worse," he sighed. "I was very silly about her when I was a
boy."

We had our supper in his quarters, and he busied himself until late in
the night with preparations for defense. The whole place was full of
cheer and plenty of game, and swarmed like a little fair with moving
figures. A camp-fire was built at dark in the center of the parade
ground, heaped logs sending their glow as far as the dark pickets. Heads
of families drew towards it while the women were putting their children
to bed; and soldiers off duty lounged there, the front of the body in
light, the back in darkness.

Cool forest night air flowed over the stockade, swaying smoke this way
and that. As the fire was stirred, and smoke turned to flame, it showed
more and more distinctly what dimness had screened.

A man rose up on the other side of it, clothed in a coffee sack, in
which holes were cut for his head and arms. His hat was a tin kettle
with the handle sticking out behind like a stiff queue.

Indifferent to his grotesqueness, he to