some way got across the river safe, and fetched to the Fort. But there, so
great is the throng, both of those who escaped and those who now, alarmed
for their lives, flock in from the farms round about, that no one had time
to care for a mere infant. Her parents were new-comers, and had no
friends. Besides, every one up there is distracted with mourning or
frantic with preparation for the morrow. The child stood about among the
cattle, trying to get warm in the straw, when we came out last night to
start. She looked so beseechingly at us, and so like my own little
Cordelia, by God! I couldn't bear it! I cursed a trifle about their
brutality, and one of 'em offered at that to take her in; but my boy here
said, 'Let's bring her with us, father,' and up she came on to Bob's
saddle, and off we started. At Herkimer's I found blankets for her, and
one of the girls gave us some hose, big enough for Bob, which we
bundled her in."

"There! said I not truly she was mine?" broke in the boy, shaking his
yellow hair proudly, and looking Mr. Stewart confidently in the eye.

"Rightly enough," replied Mr. Stewart, kindly. "And so you are my old
friend Anthony Cross's son, eh? A good, hearty lad, seeing the world
young. Can you realize easily, Master Philip, looking at us two old
people, that we were once as small as you, and played together then on the
Galway hills, never knowing there could be such a place as America? And
that later we slept together in the same tent, and thanked our stars for
not being bundled together into the same trench, years upon years?"

"Yes, and I know who you are, what's more!" said the pert boy, unabashed.

"Why, that's wisdom itself," said Mr. Stewart, pleasantly.