To me, this unexpected silence and dreary barrenness were astounding; I gazed about me fairly bewildered, almost dreaming for the moment that our foes had lifted the long siege and departed while I slept.

Heald no doubt read the thought in my eyes, for he laid a kindly hand upon my sleeve and pointed westward.
"They are all yonder, lad, at the camp,--in council, like enough.

Mark you, Wayland, how much farther to the south the limit of their camp extends than when the sun sank last night?
Saint George! they must have added all of fifty wigwams to their village! They gather like crows about a dead body.

It has an ugly look." "Yet 't is strange they leave the Fort unguarded, so that the garrison may come and go unhindered.

'T is not the usual practice of Indian warfare." "Unguarded?
Faith! the hundreds of miles of wilderness between us and our nearest neighbor are sufficient guard.