Royal Americans, and flying to their head, soon swept every trace of his
pursuers from before the works.

For an instant, Cora and Alice had stood trembling and bewildered by
this unexpected desertion; but before either had leisure for speech, or
even thought, an officer of gigantic frame, whose locks were bleached
with years and service, but whose air of military grandeur had been
rather softened than destroyed by time, rushed out of the body of mist,
and folded them to his bosom, while large scalding tears rolled down his
pale and wrinkled cheeks, and he exclaimed, in the peculiar accent of
Scotland:

"For this I thank thee, Lord! Let danger come as it will, thy servant is
now prepared!"




CHAPTER 15

"Then go we in, to know his embassy;
Which I could, with ready guess, declare,
Before the Frenchmen speak a word of it."
--King Henry V

A few succeeding days were passed amid the privations, the uproar,
and the dangers of the siege, which was vigorously pressed by a
power, against whose approaches Munro possessed no competent means of
resistance. It appeared as if Webb, with his army, which lay slumbering
on the banks of the Hudson, had utterly forgotten the strait to which