he battle, a small party of warriors,
cheered on by a French officer in a fancifully trimmed hunting-shirt,
had leaped out from their covert into the road, with the view, it
seemed, of cutting off those in front from the assistance of their
comrades in the rear; but the regulars, who guarded the road-cutters,
having discharged a well-aimed volley of musketry into their very
faces, they had turned, and fled with even more haste than they had
come, leaving behind them several of their number dead on the spot,
and among these their dashing French leader. After that, they had
taken care to keep close under cover of the grass and bushes. Now and
then, however, a tall brave, grim and hideous with war-paint, with a
yell of defiance would leap from his ambush, and, darting into the
road, tomahawk and scalp a wounded officer just fallen; then vanish
again as suddenly as if the earth had opened to swallow him up.

All this while, Col. Washington had borne himself with a firmness,
courage, and presence of mind, that would have done honor to a
forty-years' veteran. His two brother aides-de-camp having been
wounded early in the engagement, the whole duty of carrying the
general's orders had fallen on him; and nobly did he that day
discharge it. Although brave men were falling thick and fast on every
side, yet he shrank from no exposure, however perilous, did his duty
but lead him there. Mounted on horseback, his tall and stately form
was to be seen in every part of the field, the mark of a hundred
rifles, whose deadly muzzles were pointed at him whithersoever he
went. Two horses were shot dead under him, and his coat was pierced
with bullets; but he seemed to bear about him a charmed life, and went
unharmed. His danger was so great, that his friend Dr. Craik, who
watched his movements with anxious interest, looked every moment to
see him fall headlong to the ground; and that he came off alive seemed
to him a miracle. Washington himself, with that piety which ever
marked his character, laid his deliverance from the perils of that
fatal day to the overruling care of a kind and watchful Providence.

Although brought thus suddenly face to face with new and untried
dangers, Braddock bore himself throughout the day like the valiant man
that he really was. The bullets and yells of the invisible foe he
scarcely noticed, as he galloped hither and thither about the field,
giving his orders through a speaking-trumpet, whose brazen voice rose