ire that grew and swelled until the flames rose above the
forest, and were visible in the clear night miles away.

So great was the heat that Colonel Butler and the soldiers and scouts
were compelled to withdraw to the edge of the forest. The wind rose and
the flames soared. Sparks flew in myriads, and ashes fell dustily on the
dry leaves of the trees. Bob Taylor, with his hands clenched tightly,
muttered under his breath, "Wyoming! Wyoming!"

"It is the Iroquois who suffer now," said Heemskerk, as he revolved
slowly away from a heated point.

Crashes came presently as the houses fell in, and then the sparks would
leap higher and the flames roar louder. The barns, too, were falling
down, and the grain was destroyed. The grapevines were trampled under
foot, and the gardens were ruined. Oghwaga, a great central base of the
Six Nations, was vanishing forever. For four hundred years, ever since
the days of Hiawatha, the Iroquois had waxed in power. They had ruled
over lands larger than great empires. They had built up political and
social systems that are the wonder of students. They were invincible in
war, because every man had been trained from birth to be a warrior, and
now they were receiving their first great blow.

From a point far in the forest, miles away, Thayendanegea, Timmendiquas,
Hiokatoo, Sangerachte, "Indian" Butler, Walter Butler, Braxton Wyatt,
a low, heavybrowed Tory named Coleman, with whom Wyatt had become very
friendly, and about sixty Iroquois and twenty Tories were watching a
tower of light to the south that had just appeared above the trees. It
was of an intense, fiery color, and every Indian in that gloomy band
knew that it was Oghwaga, the great, the inviolate, the sacred, that was
burning, and that the men who were doing it were the white frontiersmen,
who, his red-coated allies had told him, would soon be swept forever
from these woods. And they were forced to stand and see it, not daring
to attack so strong and alert a force.

They sat there in the darkness among the trees, and watched the column
of fire grow and grow until it seemed to pierce the skies. Timmendiquas
never said a word. In his heart, Indian though he was, he felt that
the Iroquois had gone too far. In him was the spirit of the farseeing
Hiawatha. He could perceive that great cruelty always brought
retaliation; but it was not for him, almost an alien, to say these
things to Thayendanegea, the mighty war chief of the Mohawks an