fort could be made to check the flames.

"It would only be sending men to their death," I heard my father say as
I stood near, hot with impotent rage.

"Yes. It is impossible to do anything," replied the General. "If we
were free to act, our whole force could not save the houses; and I
cannot set the men to work with their buckets in the blazing light, to
be shot down by the arrows of the Indians hidden somewhere in the
darkness."

As the twelfth house blazed up, with the Indians still cunningly keeping
out of sight and crawling among the trees or crops, we all stood
watching the houses left, wondering which would be the next to burst out
into flame; but now we waited in vain, for the destruction had ceased as
far as fresh additions were concerned. But the doomed dwellings
crackled and flashed, and every time a beam or a ceiling fell in, the
heavens were brilliant with the great bursts of sparks, which eddied and
rose higher and higher, to join the great cloud floating quietly toward
the now golden river.

Still there was no sign of Indians; and at last my father walked round
to the other side to join the most keen-sighted of our men in the
look-out for the enemy, who was momentarily expected to be detected
creeping up.

From where I now stood I could hear the buzz of voices in the
block-house, where the whole of the occupants were watching the
destruction--in twelve of the cases this being the sweeping away of a
treasured and peaceful home.

By degrees the exclamations and words of sorrow--more than once mingled
with sobs--grew fainter, and there was a terrible silence, through which
came the sharp hissing and crackling of the burning wood, with again and
again a dull thud as some beam went down. At such times the flames
seemed to glow with twofold brilliancy, and the sparks were doubled in
size, while after a few minutes the fire, that had been temporarily
damped, blazed up higher than ever.

"If we only had the orders to shoot," I heard one man say to another, "I
wouldn't care then."

"But there's nothing to shoot at," was the reply. "I say, though, I've
been thinking."

"What?"

"Suppose that they could manage to set fire to the block-house here."

"Don't talk about it, man. What? With those women and children there!
No; we must shelter them from that, even if we die for it."

I was standing with my father when Colonel Preston's house had been
reduced to a glowing heap of embers, and he came u