he difficulty by
offering to stand guard for the coming night. The puzzled
commander promptly accepted his offer, instructing him, as
he had done the others,--

"If you hear any sound from without the lines, you will call
'Who goes there?' three times, and then, if no answer be
given, fire."

Putnam promised to obey, and marched to his post. Here he
examined the surrounding locality with the utmost care,
fixed in his mind the position of every point in the
neighborhood, saw that his musket was in good order, and
began his monotonous tramp, backward and forward.

For several hours all remained silent, save for the ordinary
noises of the woodland. At length, near midnight, a slight
rustling sound met his keen ears. He listened intently. Some
animal appeared to be stealthily approaching. Then there
came a crackling sound, as of a hog munching acorns.
Putnam's previous observation of the locality enabled him to
judge very closely the position of this creature, and he was
too familiar with Indian artifices, and too sensible of the
danger of his position, to let even a hog pass unchallenged.
Raising his musket to his shoulder, and taking deliberate
aim at the spot indicated, he called out, in strict
obedience to orders, "Who goes there? three times," and
instantly pulled the trigger.

A loud groaning and struggling noise followed. Putnam
quickly reloaded and ran forward to the spot. Here he found
what seemed a large bear, struggling in the agony of death.
But a moment's observation showed the wide-awake sentinel
that the seeming bear was really a gigantic Indian, enclosed
in a bear-skin, in which, disguised, he had been able to
approach and shoot the preceding sentinels. Putnam had
solved the mystery of the solitary post. The sentinels on
that outpost ceased, from that moment, to be disturbed.

Numerous other adventures of Major Putnam, and encounters
with the Indians and the French rangers, might be recounted,
but we must content ourselves with the narrative of one
which ended in the captivity of our hero, and his very
narrow escape from death in more than one form. As an
illustration of the barbarity of Indian warfare it cannot
but prove of interest.

It was the month of August, 1758. A train of baggage-wagons
had been cut off by the enemy's rangers. Majors Putnam and
Rogers, with eight hundred men, were despatched to intercept
the foe, retake the spoils, and punish them for their
daring. The effort proved fru