ery tannery between
the Fish-House and Half-moon!"

The ruddy-faced Major roared at the recital of his own misfortunes.
Mount and Murphy looked up with sympathetic grins; Elerson had fallen
asleep against the side of the shack, a bit of pie, half gnawed,
clutched in his brier-torn fist.

I had a pipe, but no tobacco; the Major filled my pipe, purring
contentedly; a soldier, at a sign from him, took Mount and Murphy to the
nearest fire, where there was a gill of grog and plenty of tobacco. I
roused Elerson, who gaped, bolted his pie with a single mighty effort,
and stumbled off after his comrades. Major Drummond squatted down
cross-legged before the smudge, lighting his corn-cob pipe from a bit of
glowing moss, and leaned back contentedly, crossing his arms behind
his head.

"I'm tired, too," he said; "we march again at midnight. If it's no
secret, I should like to know what's going on ahead there."

"It's no secret," I said, soberly; "the Senecas and Cayugas are
harrying the Oneidas; the renegades are riding the forest, murdering
women and infants. St. Leger is firing bombs at Stanwix, and Visscher is
holding German Flatts with some Caughnawaga militia."

"And Herkimer?" asked Drummond, gravely.

"Dead," I replied, in a low voice.

"Good gad, sir! I had not heard that!" he exclaimed.

"It is true, Major. The old man died while I was at German Flatts. They
say the amputation of his leg was a wretched piece of work.... He died
bolt upright in his bed, smoking his pipe, and reading aloud the
thirty-eighth Psalm.... His men are wild with grief, they say.... They
called him a coward the morning of Oriskany."

After a silence the Major's emotion dimmed his twinkling eyes; he
dragged a red bandanna handkerchief from his coat-tails and blew his
nose violently.

"All flesh is grass--eh, Captain? And some of it devilish poor grass at
that, eh? Well, well; we can't make an army in a day. But, by gad, sir,
we've done uncommonly well. You've heard of--but no, you haven't,
either. Here's news for you, friend, since you've been in the woods. On
the sixth, while you fellows were shooting down some three hundred and
fifty of the Mohawks, Royal Greens, and renegades, that sly old
wolverine, Marinus Willett, slipped out of the fort, fell on Sir John's
camp, and took twenty-one wagon-loads of provisions, blankets,
ammunition, and tools; also five British standards and every bit of
personal baggage belonging to Sir John Johnson