To them crept one of the guides who knew the district and the town of Kittanning.  With him were his son and another hardy lad.  He looked at Charles and made a sign.  The next moment some six or eight men were silently creeping through the sleeping soldiers, unnoticed even by the sharp eyes of the Colonel, who was stationed at some little distance.

Like human snakes these men wriggled themselves down the tortuous path, keeping always under cover of the bushes; and even when the open ground below was reached, they slipped so silently along beneath the cover of the hedges that not an eye saw them, not even the sharp ears of the Indians heard their insidious approach.

“Which is the house of Captain Jacobs?” asked Charles in a whisper of the guide.

“It lies yonder,” he answered, “in the centre of the village.  It is the strongest building in the place, and has loopholes from which a hot fire can be poured out upon an approaching foe.  The Indians here have great stores of gunpowder and arms—­given them by the French to keep up the border war.  Unless we can take them by surprise, we be all dead men; for they are as ten to one, and are armed to the teeth.”

Charles’s face in the moonlight was set and stern.

“Here is a stack of wood,” he said.  “Let every man take his fagot; but be silent as death.”

Plainly these men knew what they had come to do.  In perfect silence, yet with an exercise of considerable strength, they loaded themselves with the dry brushwood, and split logs which the Indians had cut and piled up ready for use either to burn or for the building of their huts.  Then, thus loaded, they crept like ghosts or ghouls through the sleeping street of the Indian town, and piled their burdens against the walls of the centre hut, which belonged to the chief.

Twice and thrice was this thing repeated; but Charles remained posted beside the door of the house, working in a strange and mysterious fashion at the entrance.  Upon his face was a strange, set smile.  Now and again he shook his clinched hand towards the heavens, as though invoking the aid or the wrath of the Deity.

The bold little band were in imminent peril.  One accidental slip or fall, an unguarded word, an involuntary cough, and the lives of the whole party might pay the forfeit.  They were in the heart of an Indian village, enemies and spies.  But the good fortune which so often attends upon some rash enterprise was with them tonight.  They completed their task, and drew away from the silent place as shadow-like as they had come.

But they did not return to their comrades; they posted themselves at a short distance from the place.  They looked well to the priming of their rifles, and to their other arms, and sat in silence to await the commencement of the battle.

The moon set in golden radiance behind the wooded hills.  In the eastern sky the first rose red showed that dawn would shortly break.  Looking towards the hill, the little band saw that movement had already begun there.  They rose to their feet, and looked from the moving shapes amid the brushwood towards the still sleeping, silent town.