The Hidden Children by Robert William Chambers Chapter 11 Page 6

saw their felled logs and cunningly devised dams, which a number of our men were attacking with pick and bar, standing in the water to their arm-pits.

Beyond them, at the Burris Farm, we passed our outlying pickets — Irregular Riflemen from the Scoharie and Sacandaga, tall, lean, wiry men, whose leaf-brown rifle-dress so perfectly blended with the tree-trunks that we were aware of them only when they halted us. And, Lord! To see them scowl at my Indians as they let us through, so that I almost expected a volley in our backs, and was relieved when we were rid o’ them.

When, later, we passed Yokam’s Place, we were fairly facing that vast solitude of twilight which lay between us and the main army’s outposts at the mouth of the Tioga. Except for a very few places on