the garrison attacking the Indians on the flank in support of
the aggressions of his vanguard.

Gilfillan was selected as the earliest express sent out, and loud and
woeful was Fifine's outcry when she discovered that her precious "Dill"
was to be withdrawn from her sight. But when he declared that he needs
must go to keep the Indians from cutting off her curls and starving out
the garrison--Mrs. Dean's twin babies were represented as the most
imminent victims, so much more precious than one, "being philopenas" as
O'Flynn admonished her--she consented, and tearfully bade him adieu. And
he kissed her very gravely, and very gravely at her request kissed the
cat. So with these manifestations of his simple affection he goes out of
these pages beyond all human ken, and into the great unknown. For Dill
returned no more.

His long backwoods experience, his knowledge of Indian character, his
wide familiarity with the face of the country, and many by-ways and
unfrequented routes, his capacity to speak the Cherokee language, all
combined to suggest his special fitness for the dangerous part he had
undertaken to play.

The next express, going two days later and following the beaten track,
was a man who had frequently served in this capacity and knew half the
Indians of the Lower Towns and Middle Settlements by name--a
quick-witted pioneer, "half-trader, half-hunter, and half-packman," as
he often described himself, and he had been in the country, he boasted,
"ever since it was built."

The choice of these two men was evidently specially judicious, and after
the mysterious disappearance of each, being smuggled out of the fort in
dead silence and the darkest hour of the deep night, the garrison
settled down to a regular routine, to wear away the time till they might
wake some morning to hear the crack of Montgomery's musketry on the
horizon, or the hissing of his grenades burning out their fuses and
bursting among the dense jungles, where the Cherokees lay in ambush and
blockaded Fort Loudon.

The military precision and order maintained continued as strict as
heretofore. It argued no slight attention to detail and adroit handling
of small opportunities that the comfort of the soldiers was in no wise
reduced by the intrusion into their restricted domain of so considerable
a number of people, many unprovided with the most ordinary conveniences
of life. Even in such a matter as table and cooking utensils the food of
the companies