AN INDIAN RAID.
That day and the next passed quietly. The first night the man who was on watch up to midnight remarked to Mr. Welch, when he relieved him, that it seemed to him that there were noises in the air.
"What sort of noises, Jackson—calls of night-birds or animals? If so, the Indians are probably around us."
"No," the man said; "all is still round here, but I seem to feel the noise rather than hear it. I should say that it was firing, very many miles off."
"The night is perfectly still, and the sound of a gun would be heard a long way."
"I cannot say that I have heard a gun; it is rather a tremble in the air than a sound."
When the man they had relieved had gone down and all was still again, Mr. Welch and Harold stood listening intently.
"Jackson was right," the farmer said; "there is something in the air. I can feel it rather than hear it. It is a sort of murmur no louder than a whisper. Do you hear it, Harold?"
"I seem to hear something," Harold said. "It might be the sound of the sea a very long way off, just as one can hear it many miles from the coast, on a still night at home. What do you think it is?"
"If it is not fancy," Mr. Welch replied, "and I do not think that we should all be deceived, it is an attack upon Gloucester."