O'Flynn, one of the few officers fit for duty, with a shade of
pallor on his face a trifle more ghastly than that of starvation,
reported that five men had failed to respond to roll-call, and upon
investigation it was found that they had burrowed out of the fort in the
darkness, seeking to desert to the enemy, but their intentions being
mistaken, or their overtures scorned, they had been stabbed and scalped
at the edge of the forest, and there their bodies were visible in the
early rays of the sun.

"May become unpleasant when the wind shifts," remarked Stuart easily,
and without emotion apparently, "but we are spared the duties of
punishing deserters according to their deserts."

Demere's face had shown a sudden nervous contraction but resumed its
fixed reserved expression, and he said nothing.

Corporal O'Flynn's report, however, was not yet exhausted. He hesitated,
almost choked. The blood rushed so scarlet to his face that one might
have wondered, at the show it made, that he had so much of that
essential element in circulation in his whole thin body. He lifted his
voice as if to urge the concentration of Stuart's attention which seemed
so casual--he had it the next moment.

"I feel like a traitor in tellin' it, sor," said O'Flynn, "I'm just one
of the men meself, an' it breaks me heart intirely to go agin 'em with
the officers. But me duty as a soldier is to the commandant of the fort,
an' as a man to the poor women an' childer."

He choked again, so reluctant was he in unfolding the fact that this was
but the first step, providentially disastrous, of a plan by which the
fort and the officers were to be abandoned, the rank and file
determining to throw themselves on the mercy of the savages, since even
to die at their hands was better than this long and futile waiting for
succor. Through Choo-qualee-qualoo some negotiations with the enemy had
been set on foot, of which O'Flynn was unaware hitherto, being excluded
from their councils as a non-commissioned officer, but after the result
of the desertion in the early hours before dawn, Daniel Eske, thoroughly
dismayed, had once more reverted to his reliance on the superior wisdom
of the commandant, and had seen fit to disclose the state of affairs to
the corporal, whose loyalty to his superior officers was always marked.

O'Flynn was commended, cautioned to be silent, and the door closed.

The two captains looked blankly at one another.

"The catastrophe is upo