desperate, who had various motives for signalizing their valor,—creeping singly from cover to cover, now reposing in the shadow of a log along the ground, now half buried in a clustering bush, made their way at length so closely under the walls of the log house as to be completely concealed from the garrison, which, unless by the window, had no mode of looking directly down upon them. As the windows were well watched by their comrades—having once attained their place of concealment—it followed that their position remained entirely concealed from those within. They lay in waiting for the favorable moment—silent as the grave, and sleepless—ready, when the garrison should determine upon a sally, to fall upon their rear; and, in the meanwhile, quietly preparing dry fuel in quantity, gathering it from time to time and piling it against the logs of the fortress, they prepared thus to fire the defenses that shut them out from their prey.
There was yet another mode of finding entrance, which has been partially glimpsed at already. The scouts had done their office diligently in more than the required respects. Finding a slender pine twisted by a late storm, and scarcely sustained by a fragment of its shaft, they applied fire to the rich turpentine oozing from the wounded part of the tree, and carefully directing its fall, as it yielded to the fire, they lodged its extremest branches, as we have already seen, against the wall of the Block House and just beneath the window, the only one looking from that quarter of the fortress. Three of the bravest of their warriors were assigned for scaling this point and securing their entrance, and the attack was forborne by the rest of the band while their present design, upon which they built greatly, was in progress.
Let us then turn to this quarter. We have already seen that the dangers of this position were duly estimated by Grayson, under the suggestion of Granger's wife. Unhappily for its
