"Where's Brock?" asked the boy, jealous of the fame of his hero,
which he seemed to think compromised by this prudent counsel.

"Have not you heard," said Norton, with something between a sigh
and a sob? "He'll never lead us again. He lies in yonder house,"
pointing to a long, low, poor-looking dwelling-house on the left
side of the road.

"What! dead? killed--so soon?" cried the boy, turning white, and
then flushing red, and unconsciously clenching his fists as he
spoke.

"Yes, Mister," said a war-bronzed soldier standing by, who looked
doubly grim from the blood trickling down his powder-blackened
cheek from a scalp wound received during the morning skirmish. "I
stood anear him when he fell, an' God knows I'd rather the bullet
had struck me; my fighting days will soon be over, anyhow. But
we'll avenge his death afore the day is done. They call us the
green tigers, them fellers do, an' there's not a man of us won't
fight like a tiger robbed of her whelps, for not a man of us
wouldn't 'a' died for the General."

"To the right, wheel, forward march!" came the order from the
Colonel, and the "green tigers" filed on with the grim resolve to
conquer or to die.

The militia, clad chiefly in homespun frieze, with flint-lock
muskets and stout cartridge boxes at their belts, were drawn up at
the roadside, and were being supplied with ammunition, previous to
following the regulars.