face, worn and anxious, and with lines that had deepened perceptibly in
the last few days. Beside him stood the second in command at Fort
Prescott, Gregory Wilmot, a middle-aged man, and the brave scout, Seth
Cole. They, too, seemed unconscious of the rain, and looked only at the
river that flowed beneath them, a dark and troubled stream.

The storm had gone on long and it showed no signs of abating. It was the
fiercest that any of them had ever seen in the Ohio Valley, and the
lightning was often so brilliant and so near that they were compelled to
shrink back in fear.

"How long has it been since the boy Henry Ware left us?" asked Major
Braithwaite.

"A week to-day," replied the scout.

"And the fleet has not yet come," said the Major, as much to himself as
to the others. "I've always believed until to-night that it would come.
That boy inspired confidence. I had to believe in him. I had no choice."

"Nor I, either," said Gregory Wilmot. "I believed in him, and I do now."

"It's the lack of news that troubles me so much," said the Major sadly.
"The leaguer of the fort has grown closer and tighter, and it seems that
nothing can get through now."

"I tried to get out last night," said the scout, "but a snake would have
had to grease himself to slip by. It's their great chief, Timmendiquas,
who is doing it all, and he doesn't mean that we shall know a single
thing about what is going on outside."

"He is certainly carrying out his intentions. I give him all credit for
his generalship," said Major Braithwaite.

The three relapsed again into silence and stared at the river, now a
dark, flowing current, and then molten metal in the dazzling glare of
the lightning. The time, the place, and his troubles stirred Major
Braithwaite deeply. To-night the wilderness oppressed him with its
immensity and its unknown, but none the less deadly, dangers. Things
that he had read, scraps of old learning at college, floated through his
head.

"_Magna pars fui_," he murmured, looking at the river and the black
forest beyond.

"What did you say, sir?" asked the scout.

"I merely meant," replied the Major, "that we, too, have our part in
great events. This, with distance's long view, may seem obscure and
small to the great world elsewhere, but it is not obscure and small to
us. Could any spectacle be more tremendous than the one we behold
to-night?"

"If the fleet does not come it is not likely that we shall behold any
more s