His seeming alarm communicated itself to the Indians.  They had been severely dealt with at Oriskany.  The present siege dragged on.  They were dissatisfied.  While the chiefs debated and talked of flight, the Oneida appeared with several others of his tribe whom he had picked up on the way.  These told the same story.  A bird had brought them the news.  The valley was swarming with soldiers.  The army of Burgoyne had been cut to pieces, said one.  Arnold had three thousand men, said another.  Others pointed to the leaves, as Hon-Yost had done, and meaningly shook their heads.

The panic spread among the Indians.  St. Leger stormed at them; Johnson pleaded with them; but all in vain.  Drink was offered them, but they refused it.  “The pow-wow said we must go,” was their answer to every remonstrance, and go they did.

“You said there would be no fighting for us Indians,” said a chief.  “We might go down and smoke our pipes.  But many of our warriors have been killed, and you mean to sacrifice us all.”

Oaths and persuasions proved alike useless.  The council broke up and the Indians took to flight.  Their panic communicated itself to the whites.  Dropping everything but their muskets, they fled in terror for their boats on Oneida Lake, with such haste that many of them threw away arms and knapsacks in their mad flight.

The Indians, who had started the panic, grew merry on seeing the wild terror of their late allies.  They ran behind them, shouting, “They are coming, they are coming!” and thus added wings to their flight.  They robbed, stripped, and even killed many of them, plundered them of their boats, and proved a more formidable foe than the enemy from whom they fled.

Half-starved and empty-handed, the whites hurried to Oswego and took boat on the lake for Montreal, while their Indian allies, who had proved of more harm than good, went merrily home to their villages, looking upon the flight as a stupendous joke.

When Arnold, hearing of what had happened, hurried to the fort, the enemy had utterly vanished, except a few whom Gansevoort’s men had brought in as prisoners.  Hon-Yost soon came back, having taken the first opportunity to slip away from the flying horde.  He had amply won his pardon.

Thus ended the siege of Fort Schuyler; in its way, considering the numbers engaged, the most desperate and bloody struggle of the Revolution, and of the greatest utility as an aid to the subsequent defeat of Burgoyne.  As regards its singular termination, it is without parallel in the history of American wars.  Hon-Yost had proved himself the most surprising idiot on record.

ON THE TRACK OF A TRAITOR.

While Major Andr[’e] was dying the death of a spy, General Arnold, his tempter and betrayer, was living the life of a cherished traitor, in the midst of the British army at New York.  This was a state of affairs far from satisfactory to the American authorities.  The tool had suffered; the schemer had escaped.  Could Arnold be captured, and made to pay the penalty of his treason, it would be a sharp lesson of retribution to any who might feel disposed to follow his base example.