garding the proposed expedition. There would be no doubtful settlers.
The line between Tories and Whigs was drawn too sharply; and every Whig
stood by Ethan Allen.

Enoch had learned something of the paths and runways of this part of the
Grants. It had been near here that Lot Breckenridge and himself, with
Crow Wing, had spent a winter trapping. Lot had now gone, so he had
heard, to Boston as he said he should if fighting began. He had gone to
help Israel Putnam and the other New England leaders pen the British
into the city and aid in that series of maneuvres which finally drove
the red-coats into their ships. As for himself, Enoch was only eager to
be one of those who should storm the walls of Ticonderoga, and glad as
he was to have been singled out for this present duty, he was determined
to husband his strength so as to get back to Castleton before the army
gathering there should move against the British fortifications.

He walked rapidly; more often he ran. In the pouch at his belt he
carried parched corn, like an Indian on the warpath. Occasionally at a
clearing, where some hardy borderer was scratching a living from the
half-cleared soil, he would stop long enough to eat. But usually he
halted only to give the good man of the house the message from Ethan
Allen and, as he passed on and entered the forest on the further side he
looked back to see the settler, his gun on his shoulder, bidding his
family good-bye preparatory to setting out for the rendezvous appointed
for the American troops.

But nature revolts when a certain point of exhaustion is reached.
Refusing to remain the night at one kindly settler's home, Enoch finally
found himself in the forest a goodly distance from any other house. The
path could be followed quite easily, the woods being open; but he was
footsore and thoroughly wearied. He shrank from lying down beside the
trail, however, for more reasons than one. On several occasions that
afternoon he had heard of the presence of another traveler in the
vicinity, and the identity of this man he could not learn. The settlers
who had mentioned him, however, declared they believed him to be a New
York agent, or a spy from the British across the lake, who was going
through the region to discover just how the people felt regarding the
rising trouble between the Colonials and the mother country. Such, at
least, had been the trend of his conversation with the loyal Americans
to whom he had been unwise eno