him where I might find Colonel
Willett, and he said that a scout was now out toward Johnstown, and
that Willett led it. This was all he knew, all the information I could
get from him. Returning along the dusty, steep streets to the Half-Moon
Tavern, I called in the stolid Dutch landlord, requesting information;
but he knew nothing at all except that a number of timid people were
packing up because an express had come in the night before with news
that a body of Tories and Indians had attacked Cobleskill, taken a Mr.
Warner, and murdered the entire family of a Captain Dietz--father,
mother, wife, four little children, and a Scotch servant-girl, Jessie
Dean.

Observing the horror with which I received the news he shook his head,
pulled at his long pipe for a few moments in thoughtful silence, and
said:

"What shall we do, sir? They kill us everywhere. Better die at home
than in the bush. I think a man's as safe here in Albany as in any
place, unless he quits all and leaves affairs to go to ruin to skulk in
one o' the valley forts. But they've even burned Stanwix now, and the
blockhouses are poor defense against Iroquois fire-arrows. If I had a
wife I'd take her to Johnstown Fort; it's built of stone, they say.
Besides, Marinus Willett is there. I wish to God he were here!"

We lingered in the empty tap-room for a while, talking in low voices of
the peril; and I was certainly amazed, so utterly unprepared was I to
find such a town as Albany in danger from the roaming scalping parties
infesting the frontier.

Still, had my own headquarters been in Albany, I should have considered
it the proper place for Elsin; but under these ominous, unlooked-for
conditions I dared not leave her here, even domiciled with some family
of my acquaintance, as I had intended. Indeed, I learned that the young
patroon himself had gone to Heldeberg to arm his tenantry, and I knew
that when Stephen Van Rensselaer took alarm it was not at the idle
whistling of a kill-deer plover.

As far as I could see there was now nothing for Elsin but to go forward
with me--strange irony of fate!--to Johnstown, perhaps to Butlersbury,
the late residence of that mortal enemy of mine, who had brought upon
her this dreadful trouble. How great a trouble it might prove to be I
dared not yet consider, for the faint hope was ever in me that this
unholy marriage might not stand the search of Tryon County's parish
records--that the poor creature he had cast off mig