“There’s a soldier, sir!” said Major Drummond, emphasizing his words with a smart blow of his riding-cane on his polished quarter-boots.  “He’s had us on a dog-trot since we started; up hill, down dale, across the cursed Sacandaga swamps, through fords chin-high!  By gad, sir! allow me to tell you that nothing stopped us!  We went through windfalls like partridges; we crossed the hills like a herd o’ deer in flight!  We ran as though the devil were snapping at our shanks!  I’m half dead, thank you—­and my shins!—­you should see where that razor-boned nag of mine shaved bark enough off the trees with me to start every 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, including his private papers, maps, memoranda, and all orders and instructions for the completed plans of campaign....  Wait, if you please, sir.  That is not all.