“Shall we burn the house, sir?” asked Mount, as I came to the doorway and looked out.

I shook my head, picked up rifle, pouch, and sack, and descended the steps.  At the same instant a man appeared at the foot of the hill, and Elerson waved his hand, saying:  “Here’s that mad Irishman, Tim Murphy, back already.”

Murphy came jauntily up the hill, saluted me with easy respect, and drew from his pouch a small packet of papers which he handed me, nodding carelessly at Elerson and staring hard at Mount as though he did not recognize him.

“Phwat’s this?” he inquired of Elerson—­“a Frinch cooroor, or maybe a Sac shquaw in a buck’s shirrt?”

“Don’t introduce him to me,” said Mount to Elerson; “he’ll try to kiss my hand, and I hate ceremony.”

“Quit foolin’,” said Elerson, as the two big, over-grown boys seized each other and began a rough-and-tumble frolic.  “You’re just cuttin’ capers, Tim, becuz you’ve heard that we’re takin’ the war-path—­quit pullin’ me, you big Irish elephant!  Is it true we’re takin’ the war-path?”

“How do I know?” cried Murphy; but the twinkle in his blue eyes betrayed him; “bedad, ’tis home to the purty lasses we go this blessed day, f’r the crool war is over, an’ the King’s got the pip, an—­”

“Murphy!” I said.

“Sorr,” he replied, letting go of Mount and standing at a respectful slouch.

“Did you get Beacraft there in safety?”

“I did, sorr.”

“Any trouble?”

“None, sorr—­f’r me.”

I opened the first despatch, looking at him keenly.

“Do we take the war-path?” I asked.

“We do, sorr,” he said, blandly.  “McDonald’s in the hills wid the McCraw an’ten score renegades.  Wan o’ their scouts struck old man Schell’s farm an’ he put buckshot into sivinteen o’ them, or I’m a liar where I shtand!”

“I knew it,” muttered Elerson to Mount.  “Where you see smoke, there’s fire; where you see Murphy, there’s trouble.  Look at the grin on him—­and his hatchet shined up like a Cayuga’s war-axe!”

I opened the despatch; it was from Schuyler, countermanding his instructions for me to go to Stanwix, and directing me to warn every settlement in the Kingsland district that McDonald and some three hundred Indians and renegades were loose on the Schoharie, and that their outlying scouts had struck Broadalbin.

I broke the wax of the second despatch; it was from Harrow, briefly thanking me for the capture of Beacraft, adding that the man had been sent to Albany to await court-martial.

That meant that Beacraft must hang; a most disagreeable feeling came over me, and I tore open the third and last paper, a bulky document, and read it: 

     “Varick manor,
     “June the 2d. 
     “An hour to dawn.