ses to the troops to animate and
encourage their hope, and continue to the utmost their power of
resistance. And the exhalation of every sigh was with a thought of South
Carolina, and the respiration of every breath was with a prayer toward
Virginia.

As the number of horses had greatly diminished, and the discovery was
made that certain lean dogs had gone to the kitchen on an errand far
different from the one that used to lure them to the pots, about which
they had been wont to greedily and piteously snuff and whine, the
quiescent waiting and reliance on the judgment and the capacity of the
commandant to extricate the garrison from this perilous plight gave way
anew. Criticisms of the management grew rife. The return of Hamish
MacLeod, at the moment when starvation seemed imminent, and his instant
departure at so great a peril, for the circumstances of his escape had
been learned by the soldiers from the confidences of Choo-qualee-qualoo
to young Eske, who was always free with his tongue, implied that
Hamish's earlier mission had failed, and that no troops were now on the
march to their succor. They, too, had seen the capering Indian in the
red coat of an officer of rank, the lace cravat of a man of quality
which Choo-qualee-qualoo flourished, and they deduced a shrewd surmise
of Montgomery's repulse. The men who had earliest revolted against the
hardships now entertained rebellious sentiments and sought to foster
them in others. Although, as ringleaders in the food riot, they had been
summarily placed in irons, their punishment had been too brief perhaps
for a salutary moral effect. Demere's severity was always
theoretical,--a mental attitude one might say. The hardship of adding
shackles to the agonies of slow starvation so preyed upon his heart
that he had ordered the prisoners released before a sober reflection had
done its full work. The exemplary conduct, for a time, of the culprits
had no sufficient counterpart in chastened hearts, for they nourished
bitterness and secretly agitated mutiny.

The crisis came one morning when the meager supply of repulsive food had
shrunken to the scope of a few days' rations, the quantity always
dwindling in a regularly diminishing ratio; it had recently barely
enabled the men to sustain the usual guard duty, and they lay about the
parade at other times, or at full length on the porches of the barracks,
too feeble and dispirited to stir hand or foot without necessity.
Corporal