nor did he lose a second.  Swiftly he jumped and ran toward the end of the roof where the burning arrow, now surrounded by blazing shingles, was sticking in the roof.  How he ever ran along that slanting roof and with a pail in his hand was incomprehensible.  In moments like that men become superhuman.  It all happened in an instant.  He reached the arrow, kicked it over the wall, and then dashed the bucket of water on the blazing shingles.  In that single instant, wherein his tall form was outlined against the bright light behind him, he presented the fairest kind of a mark for the Indians.  Scores of rifles were levelled and discharged at him.  The bullets pattered like hail on the roof of the block-house, but apparently none found their mark, for the man ran back and disappeared.

“It was Clarke!” exclaimed Col.  Zane.  “No one but Clarke has such light hair.  Wasn’t that a plucky thing?”

“It has saved the block-house for to-night,” answered Jonathan.  “See, the Indians are falling back.  They can’t stand in the face of that shooting.  Hurrah!  Look at them fall!  It could not have happened better.  The light from the cabin will prevent any more close attacks for an hour and daylight is near.”

CHAPTER XIV.

The sun rose red.  Its ruddy rays peeped over the eastern hills, kissed the tree-tops, glinted along the stony bluffs, and chased away the gloom of night from the valley.  Its warm gleams penetrated the portholes of the Fort and cast long bright shadows on the walls; but it brought little cheer to the sleepless and almost exhausted defenders.  It brought to many of the settlers the familiar old sailor’s maxim:  “Redness ’a the morning, sailor’s warning.”  Rising in its crimson glory the sun flooded the valley, dyeing the river, the leaves, the grass, the stones, tingeing everything with that awful color which stained the stairs, the benches, the floor, even the portholes of the block-house.

Historians call this the time that tried men’s souls.  If it tried the men think what it must have been to those grand, heroic women.  Though they had helped the men load and fire nearly forty-eight hours; though they had worked without a moment’s rest and were now ready to succumb to exhaustion; though the long room was full of stifling smoke and the sickening odor of burned wood and powder, and though the row of silent, covered bodies had steadily lengthened, the thought of giving up never occurred to the women.  Death there would be sweet compared to what it would be at the hands of the redmen.

At sunrise Silas Zane, bare-chested, his face dark and fierce, strode into the bastion which was connected with the blockhouse.  It was a small shedlike room, and with portholes opening to the river and the forest.  This bastion had seen the severest fighting.  Five men had been killed here.  As Silas entered four haggard and powder-begrimed men, who were kneeling before the portholes, looked up at him.  A dead man lay in one corner.