"'Yes.'
"'And how, then, are you here?'
"'I was a prisoner, but escaped; and so great is my misery, that I beg of you to make me a prisoner again, if you are in the American interest.'
"'By your yellow facings, you are not one of the King's Fusiliers.'
"'I am a 25th man,' said I.
"'A 25th man?' he repeated, coming nearer, and looking hastily about to see if we were observed, but all around the vast landscape seemed desolate and tenantless; 'I will screen and save you if I can, for the sake of the old country neither of us may ever see again; but, more than all, for the sake of the number on your buttons. Here, taste this first, and then follow me.'
"He drew a leather hunting-bottle from the pocket of his rough pea-jacket, and gave me a good dram of Jamaica rum, but for which, I am sure, I should have died there, for the cold was fast overpowering me.
"'So you are a 25th man?' said he, surveying me with considerable interest; 'well, for that reason, if it were for nothing else, I shall befriend you. Come this way.'
"I was too cold—too intensely miserable—to question his meaning, but accompanied him through the wood, by a narrow path where the snow lay deep, and where, in some places, it had fallen in such a manner over the broad, horizontal and interlaced branches of the pine trees as to form quite a covered passage, where the atmosphere felt mild—even warm, compared with the temperature elsewhere. After a time, we reached an open plateau, on the slope of the hills that look towards Lake George, where we found his hut, a comfortable and warm little dwelling, sheltered by stupendous pines, and built entirely of fir logs, dressed and squared by the hatchet, and pegged each down into the other through holes bored by an auger. It had a stone chimney, within which a smouldering fire soon shot up into a ruddy blaze as he cast a heap of crackling fir cones on it, and then added some dry birch billets, that roared and sputtered cheerily, and threw showers of sparks all over us.
"He gave me some food, broiled venison, hard biscuits, and a good can of Jamaica grog; and he also gave me that which I needed sorely—warm clothing, in the shape of an old frieze coat, lined with martin skins, in lieu of my poor, faded and tattered regimentals, which, for security's sake, we cast into the fire and burned.