bout, and one of his shots was followed by a cry of pain and the
disappearance of the figure. After that the fire of his antagonists
diminished and soon ceased. They had shown much courage, but seemed to
think that the defenders were in superior numbers and a further advance
would mean their own destruction.

Again silence came, save for the hum of the camp. The fires burnt
brightly behind him, and far off in front he saw the flickering fires of
the enemy. As the wind increased the lights wavered and the cones split
into many streams of flame before it. The leaves and boughs whistled in
the rush of air and the waters of the creek sang a minor chord on the
shallows. Talbot had heard these sounds a hundred times when a boy in
the wilderness of the deep woods, and it was easy enough for him to
carry himself back there, with no army or soldier near. But he quickly
dismissed such thoughts as would lull him only into neglect of his
watch. After having kept it so long and so well it would be the height
of weakness to fail now, when day could not be much more than two hours
distant.

The silence remained unbroken. An hour passed and then another, and in
the east he saw a faint shade of dark gray showing through the black as
if through a veil.

The gray tint brightened and the black veil became thinner. Soon it
parted and a bar of light shot across the eastern horizon, broadening
rapidly till the world of hills, fields and forests rose up from the
darkness. A trumpet sounded in the hostile camp.

Skirmishers filled the woods in front of Talbot and pressed toward him
in a swarm.

"Surrender!" cried out one of them, an officer. "It is useless for you
to resist! We are a hundred and you are one! Don't you see?"

Talbot turned and looked back at the fires burning in the empty camp of
his comrades. The light of the morning showed everything, even to the
last boat-load of the beaten brigade landing on the farther shore; he
understood all.

"Yes, I will surrender," he said, as his eyes gleamed with sudden
comprehension of his great triumph, "but I've held you back till the
last company of our division has passed the river and is safe."

CHAPTER XXIII

OUT OF THE FOREST

The retreating brigade, the river behind it and the pursuit seemingly
lost on the farther shore, passed on in the golden sunshine of the
morning through, a country of gentle hills, green fields and scattered
forest.

It was joined three hours afte