James, with his company, had, after escorting the cattle to the fort, crossed the marsh to the intrenched camp, as the fort was already crowded with troops.  The company therefore avoided the horrors of the siege.  When the report circulated that a surrender would probably be made the next morning, Nat went to James.

“What are you going to do, captain?”

“Do, Nat?  Why, I have nothing to do.  If Monro and his council decide to surrender, there is an end of it.  You don’t propose that our company is to fight Montcalm’s army alone, do you?”

“No, I don’t,” Nat said, testily; “there has been a deal too much fighting already.  I understand holding out till the last, when there’s a hope of somebody coming to relieve you; but what’s the use of fighting, and getting a lot of your men killed, and raising the blood of those redskin devils to boiling point?  If the colonel had given up the place at once, we should have saved a loss of 300 men, and Montcalm would have been glad enough to let us march off to Fort Edward.”

“But probably he will agree to let us do that now,” James said.

“He may agree,” Nat said, contemptuously; “but how about the redskins?  Do you think that, after losing a lot of their braves, they are going to see us march quietly away, and go home without a scalp?  I tell you, captain, I know redskin nature, and, as sure as the sun rises tomorrow, there will be a massacre; and I, for one, ain’t going to lay down my rifle, and let the first redskin, as takes a fancy to my scalp, tomahawk me.”

“Well, but what do you propose, Nat?”

“Well, captain, I have heard you say yours is an independent command, and that you can act with the company wherever you like.  While you are here, I know you are under the orders of the colonel; but if you had chosen to march away on any expedition of your own, you could have done it.”

“That is so, Nat; but now the siege is once begun, I don’t know that I should be justified in marching away, even if I could.”

“But they are going to surrender, I tell you,” Nat insisted.  “I don’t see as how it can be your duty to hand over your company to the French, if you can get them clear away, so as to fight for the king again.”

“What do you say, Edwards?” James asked his lieutenant.

“I don’t see why we shouldn’t march away, if we could,” Edwards said.  “Now that the game is quite lost here, I don’t think anyone could blame you for saving the company, if possible, and I agree with Nat that Montcalm will find it difficult, if not impossible, to keep his Indians in hand.  The French have never troubled much on that score.”

“Well, Nat, what is your plan?” James asked, after a pause.

“The plan is simple enough,” Nat said.  “There ain’t no plan at all.  All we have got to do is to march quietly down to the lake, to take some of the canoes that are hauled up at the mouth of the swamp, and to paddle quietly off, keeping under the trees on the right-hand side.  There ain’t many redskins in the woods that way, and the night is as dark as pitch.  We can land eight or ten miles down the lake, and then march away to the right, so as to get clean round the redskins altogether.”