"I should advise you to stop down here," the hunter said as they
replaced the bars. "If you did not hear me you certainly would not
hear the redskins, and they'd all be over the palisade before you had
time to fire a shot. I'm glad to see you safe, for I was badly
skeared lest I should find nothing but a heap of ashes here."

The next two men now turned out, and Mr. Welch led his visitor into
the house and struck a light.

"Halloo, Pearson! you must have been in a skirmish," he said, seeing
that the hunter's head was bound up with a bloodstained bandage.

"It was all that," Pearson said, "and wuss. I went down to Gloucester
and told 'em what I had heard, but the darned fools tuk it as quiet
as if all King George's troops with fixed bayonets had been camped
round 'em. The council got together and palavered for an hour, and
concluded that there was no chance whatever of the Iroquois venturing
to attack such a powerful place as Gloucester. I told 'em that the
redskins would go over their stockade at a squirrel's jump, and that
as War Eagle alone had at least 150 braves, while there warn't more
than 50 able-bodied men in Gloucester and all the farms around it,
things would go bad with 'em if they didn't mind. But bless yer, they
knew more than I did about it. Most of 'em had moved from the East
and had never seen an Injun in his war-paint. Gloucester had never
been attacked since it was founded nigh ten years ago, and they
didn't see no reason why it should be attacked now. There was a few
old frontiersmen like myself among 'em who did their best to stir 'em
up, but it was no manner of good. When the council was over we put
our heads together, and just went through the township a-talking to