tle of preparation, fell asleep.

While the two successful but exhausted messengers slumbered, Colonel
Johnson called a council of war, at which the chief militia officers and
old Hendrik, the Mohawk sachem, were present. The white men favored the
swift advance of a picked force to save Edward, one of the new forts
erected to protect the frontier, from the hordes, and the dispatch of a
second chosen force to guard Lyman, another fort, in the same manner.
The wise old Mohawk alone opposed the plan, and his action was
significant.

Hendrik picked up three sticks from the ground and held them before the
eyes of the white men.

"Put these together," he said, "and you cannot break them. Take them one
by one and you break them with ease."

But he could not convince the white leaders, and then, a man of great
soul, he said that if his white comrades must go in the way they had
chosen he would go with them. Calling about him the Mohawk warriors,
two hundred in number, he stood upon a gun carriage and addressed them
with all the spirit and eloquence of his race. Few of the Americans
understood a word he said, but they knew from his voice that he was
urging his men to deeds of valor.

Hendrik told the warriors that the French and their allies were at hand,
and the forces of Waraiyageh were going out to meet them. Waraiyageh had
always been their friend, and it became them now to fight by his side
with all the courage the Ganeagaono had shown through unnumbered
generations. A fierce shout came from the Mohawks, and, snatching their
tomahawks from their belts, they waved them about their heads.

To the young Philadelphians and to Grosvenor, the Englishman, who stood
by, it was a sight wild and picturesque beyond description. The Mohawks
were in full war paint and wore little clothing. Their dark eyes
flashed, as the eloquence of Hendrik made the intoxication of battle
rise in their veins, and when two hundred tomahawks were swung aloft and
whirled about the heads of their owners the sun flashed back from them
in glittering rays. Now and then fierce shouts of approval burst forth,
and when Hendrik finished and stepped down from the gun carriage, they
were ready to start on a march, of which the wise old sachem had not
approved.

The militia also were rapidly making ready, and Robert and Tayoga,
awakened and refreshed, took their places with the little Philadelphia
troop and the young Englishman, Grosvenor. Hendrik was too ol