“Medical attention?” Doc whispered; then turned his eyes toward heaven with the air of a man who asks the gods to listen.

… Fort Edward, when we returned, was in an even greater turmoil than when we had left it three days before. The place was twice as populous, and the fields around the fort were sprinkled with soldiers so tattered and so slovenly that they had the look of mendicants. Among them were families camping beneath overturned carts or in bough huts.

The families were those of farmers from the scattered clearings to the northward. As to the identity of the haggard troops who sat lethargically around us, hunting in their garments for vermin or repairing the ravages of a weary march, we were not long left in doubt.

Just outside the entrance to the fort stood a spellbound group of militiamen; and as we drew near, we heard a bawling voice, familiarly hoarse, addressing them.

“Those Germans,” bellowed the voice, “they’re about the size of a haystack, only shaped more like lemons. You got to watch ’em for as much as five minutes to see whether they’re alive or not. They got boots that’ll hold as much as eight gallons apiece and hats like a leather fire bucket. They got coats made out of felt, so when you fire a bullet at ’em it sounds like hitting a feather bed with a axe-helve; and they hang things all over themselves, thicker’n what you see on a tin-peddler’s cart. When they’re moving real fast, they scoot along as much as a mile every day or so. If them Germans was all fifteen years old and started today to walk from here to Albany, they’d have married grandchildren before they got there! Up at Hubbardton I see one of ’em start to brush a caterpillar out of his hair, but before he touched it, it had a cocoon and then come out and flew around—an awful pretty yellow butterfly! What I mean, them Germans is kind of slow! I’d ’a’ tooken one of ’em and brought him along, only I didn’t have no ammunition wagon with me, and he’d ’a’ been an all-fired nuisance to manage unless you mounted him on wheels like a cannon. The next time I see one—–”

The bawler’s eye caught mine. It was Cap Huff. He broke off and came pushing toward us through the crowd.

“For God’s sake, where you been?” he demanded. “I been standing here watching for you, ever since we got in with St. Clair this morning. If you got any business to do, hurry up and get it out of the way and then come over to my lean-to under the southwest corner of the fort. Stevie’s there, and hereafter you work for I and Stevie!”

LX