After a minute or two of listening he said to me, "It is nothing. The
cries are German, but the oaths are all English--as they generally are."

All the same he put his gun over his arm as he walked down to the
stockade, and out through the gate upon the road, to discover the cause of
the commotion.

Five red-coated soldiers on horseback, with another, cloaked to the eyes
and bearing himself proudly, riding at their heels; a negro following on,
also mounted, with a huge bundle in his arms before him, and a shivering,
yellow-haired lad of about my own age on a pillion behind him; clustering
about these, a motley score of poor people, young and old, some bearing
household goods, and all frightened out of their five senses--this is what
we saw on the highway.

What we heard it would be beyond my power to recount. From the chaos of
terrified exclamations in German, and angry cursing in English, I gathered
generally that the scared mob of Palatines were all for flying the Valley,
or at the least crowding into Fort Johnson, and that the troopers were
somewhat vigorously endeavoring to reassure and dissuade them.

Mr. Stewart stepped forward--I following close in his rear--and began
phrasing in German to these poor souls the words of the soldiers, leaving
out the blasphemies with which they were laden. How much he had known
before I cannot guess, but the confidence with which he told them that the
French and Indian marauders had come no farther than the Palatine Village
above Fort Kouarie, that they were but a small force, and that Honikol
Herkimer had already started out to drive them back, seemed to his simple
auditors born of knowledge. They at all events listened to him, which they