"Who be they?" asked Nick, astounded.
"The old pack—Cadys, Helmers, Bowman, Weed, Grinnis. They are ten rifles."
He got very red.
"This is a domestic business," said I. "Shall we wash our bloody linen for the world to see what filth chokes Fonda's Bush?"
"No," said he, slowly, with that faint flare in his eyes I had seen at times, "let us clean our own house o' vermin, and make no brag of what is only our proper shame."
CHAPTER XIX
OUT OF THE NORTH
It lacked still an hour to midnight, which time I had set for our advance upon John Howell's house, and my Oneidas had not yet done painting, when Johnny Silver, who was on guard, whistled from his post, and I ran thither with Nick.
A man in leather was coming in through the chevaux-de-frise, and Johnny dropped a tamarack log across the ditch for him, over which he ran like a tree-martin, and so climbed up into the flare of Nick's lantern.