ripped the man flat on his face in the dust, and Murphy
jerked his arms behind his back, tying them fast at the wrists with a
cord which Elerson cut from the pack and flung to him.

"Rip up thim bales, Jack!" said Murphy. "Yell find them full o' powther
an' ball an' cutlery, sorr, or I'm a liar!" he added to me. "This limb
o' Lucifer is wan o' Francy McCraw's renegados!--Danny Redstock, sorr,
th' tirror av the Sacandaga!"

Redstock! I had seen him at Broadalbin that evening in May, threatening
the angry settlers with his rifle, when Dorothy and the Brandt-Meester
and I had ridden over with news of smoke in the hills.

Murphy tied the prostrate man's legs, pulled him across the dusty road
to the bushes, and laid him on his back under a great maple-tree.

Mount, knife in hand, ripped up the bales of crackling peltry, and
Elerson delved in among the skins, flinging them right and left in his
impatient search.

"There's no powder here," he exclaimed, rising to his knees on the road
and staring at Mount; "nothing but badly cured beaver and mangy
musk-rat."

"Well, he baled 'em to conceal something!" insisted Mount. "No man packs
in this moth-eaten stuff for love of labor. What's that parcel in
the bottom?"

"Not powder," replied Elerson, tossing it out, where it rebounded,
crackling.

"Squirrel pelts," nodded Mount, as I picked up the packet and looked at
the sealed cords. The parcel was addressed: "General Barry St. Leger, in
camp before Stanwix." I sat down on the grass and began to open it, when
a groan from the prostrate prisoner startled me. He had struggled to a
sitting posture, and was facing me, eyes bulging from their sockets.
Every vestige of color had left his visage.

"For God's sake don't open that!" he gasped--"there is naught there,
sir--"

"Silence!" roared Mount, glaring at him, while Murphy and Elerson,
dropping their armfuls of pelts, came across the road to the bank
where I sat.

"I will not be silent!" screamed the man, rocking to and fro on the
ground. "I did not do that!--I know nothing of what that packet holds! A
Mohawk runner gave it to me--I mean that I found it on the trail--"

The riflemen stared at him in contempt while I cut the strings of the
parcel and unrolled the bolt of heavy miller's cloth.

At first I did not comprehend what all that mass of fluffy hair could
be. A deep gasp from Mount enlightened me, and I dropped the packet in a
revulsion of horror indescribable. For t