All was silence in the body of the fort.  The men off duty had long since retired to rest in their clothes, and only the “All’s well!” of the sentinels was heard at intervals of a quarter of an hour, as the cry echoed from mouth to mouth in the line of circuit.  Suddenly, however, between two of those intervals, and during a pause in the languid conversation of the officers, the sharp challenge of a sentinel was heard, and then quick steps on the rampart, as of men hastening to the point whence the challenge had been given.  The officers, whom this new excitement seemed to arouse into fresh activity, hurriedly quitted the room; and, with as little noise as possible, gained the spot where the voice had been heard.  Several men were bending eagerly over the rampart, and, with their muskets at the recover, riveting their gaze on a dark and motionless object that lay on the verge of the ditch immediately beneath them.

“What have you here, Mitchell?” asked Captain Blessington, who was in command of the guard, and who had recognised the gruff voice of the veteran in the challenge just given.

“An American burnt log, your honour,” muttered the soldier, “if one was to judge from its stillness; but if it is, it must have rolled there within the last minute; for I’ll take my affidavy it wasn’t here when I passed last in my beat.”

“An American burnt log, indeed! it’s some damned rascal of a spy, rather,” remarked Captain Erskine.  “Who knows but it may be our big friend, come to pay us a visit again?  And yet he is not half long enough for him, either.  Can’t you try and tickle him with the bayonet, any of you fellows, and see whether he is made of flesh and blood?”

Although this observation was made almost without object, it being totally impossible for any musket, even with the addition of its bayonet, to reach more than half way across the ditch, the several sentinels threw themselves on their chests, and, stretching over the rampart as far as possible, made the attempt to reach the suspicious looking object that lay beyond.  No sooner, however, had their arms been extended in such a manner as to be utterly powerless, when the dark mass was seen to roll away in an opposite direction, and with such rapidity that, before the men could regain their feet and level their muskets, it had entirely disappeared from their view.

“Cleverly managed, to give the red skin his due,” half laughingly observed Captain Erskine, while his brother officers continued to fix their eyes in astonishment on the spot so recently occupied by the strange object; “but what the devil could be his motive for lying there so long?  Not playing the eaves-dropper, surely; and yet, if he meant to have picked off a sentinel, what was to have prevented him from doing it sooner?”

“He had evidently no arms,” said Ensign Delme.

“No, nor legs either, it would appear,” resumed the literal Erskine.  “Curse me if I ever saw any thing in the shape of a human form bundled together in that manner.”