the circling wall of dark woods. Then he slept.

Willet was the only white man who remained awake. He saw the great
fire die, and the dawn come in its place. He felt then for the first
time in all that long encounter the strangeness of his own position.
The wilderness, savages and forest battle had become natural to him,
and yet his life had once been far different. There was a taste of a
distant past in that fierce duel at Quebec when he slew the bravo,
Boucher, a deed for which he had never felt a moment's regret, and yet
when he balanced the old times against the present, he could not say
which had the advantage. He had found true friends in the woods, men
who would and did risk their own lives to save his.

The dawn came swiftly, flooding the earth with light. Daganoweda and
many of the Mohawk warriors awoke, but the young Philadelphia captain
and his men slept on, plunged in the utter stupor of exhaustion.
Tayoga, who had made a supreme effort, both physical and mental, also
continued to sleep, and Robert, lying with his feet to the coals,
never stirred.

Daganoweda shook himself, and, so shaking, shook the last shred of
sleep from his eyes. Then he looked with pride at his warriors, those
who yet lay upon the ground and those who had arisen. He was a young
chief, not yet thirty years of age, and he was the bloom and flower of
Mohawk courage and daring. His name, Daganoweda, the Inexhaustible,
was fully deserved, as his bravery and resource were unlimited. But
unlike Tayoga, he had in him none of the priestly quality. He had not
drunk or even sipped at the white man's civilization. The spirituality
so often to be found in the Onondagas was unknown to him. He was a
warrior first, last and all the time. He was Daganoweda of the Clan of