imitation of a skeleton, in silver, and wore a little black hussar-cap, with a skull and cross-bones in white on the front, the very costume afterward used by the “Black Brunswickers” of Waterloo renown. She was dripping with rain.

Without the slightest hesitation, she addressed Schuyler, earnestly.

“Sir,” she said, “you are in danger, and you know it not.[Pg 56] A party of savages, led by the Tory spy, Colonel Butler, are already between you and your own forces, to cut you off. Retire, while there is time. I am sent to warn you. They are now in yonder wood.”

[Pg 56]

As she spoke, she pointed to a piece of woods in their rear, and wheeled her horse as if to flee. Adrian Schuyler impulsively caught at the bridle.

“Tell me, at least,” he entreated, “that you will not run into danger on our account. We are soldiers, you a woman.”

“No time for talking,” she answered, sharply. “Look yonder.”

He looked, and the edge of the wood was full of Indians.

CHAPTER XII.

THE PARTISAN.

At the sight of the Indians, the American Rangers instinctively clustered together, and the flankers came galloping in.

That the enemy were in force was evident from the boldness with which they showed themselves, coming running out, and spreading into a long skirmish line, that threatened to cut off the rangers from any return to their own army.

It was evident that they were in a trap from which there was no escape, except by cutting their way out, twenty white men against nearly a hundred Indians. The hunters that followed Adrian, bold as they were by nature, began to evince symptoms of shrinking from the test. Brave militia, as far as service in war went, they were as yet only the raw stuff that veterans are made of. Many cheeks were pale, and there was much nervous fumbling at weapons, but they kept silence and anxiously watched the countenance of their young leader for advice and succor.

Adrian Schuyler had not served, as volunteer and officer, in the famous corps of the Zieten Hussars, without profiting by the counsels of the best leaders of light cavalry in Europe. He scanned the advancing line of the enemy 

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