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D'Ri and I: A Tale of Daring Deeds in the Second War with the British.

by Irving Bacheller · English · Gutenberg #12440 · 367,324 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: D'Ri and I: A Tale of Daring Deeds in the Second War with the British.

Author: Irving Bacheller


        
Release date: May 1, 2004 [eBook #12440]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK D'RI AND I: A TALE OF DARING DEEDS IN THE SECOND WAR WITH THE BRITISH. ***

D'RI AND I



A TALE of DARING DEEDS in the SECOND WAR with the BRITISH.

Being the Memoirs of Colonel Ramon Bell, U.S.A.



BY IRVING BACHELLER, author of "Eben Holden."



1901





TO MY WIFE




PREFACE

This is a tale of the adventurous and rugged pioneers, who,
unconquered by other foes, were ever at war with the ancient
wilderness, pushing the northern frontier of the white man farther
and farther to the west.  Early in the last century they had
striped the wild waste of timber with roadways from Lake Champlain
to Lake Ontario, and spotted it with sown acres wide and fair; and
still, as they swung their axes with the mighty vigor of great
arms, the forest fell before them,

In a long valley south of the St. Lawrence, sequestered by river,
lake, and wilderness, they were slow to lose the simplicity, the
dialect, and the poverty of their fathers.

Some Frenchmen of wealth and title, having fled the Reign of
Terror, bought a tract of wild country there (six hundred and
thirty thousand acres) and began to fill it with fine homes.  It
was said the great Napoleon himself would some day build a chateau
among them.  A few men of leisure built manor-houses on the river
front, and so the Northern Yankee came to see something of the
splendor of the far world, with contempt, as we may well imagine,
for its waste of time and money.

Those days the North country was a theatre of interest and renown.
Its play was a tragedy; its setting the ancient wilderness; its
people of all conditions from king to farm hand.  Chateau and
cabin, trail and forest road, soldier and civilian, lake and river,
now moonlit, now sunlit, now under ice and white with snow, were of
the shifting scenes in that play.  Sometimes the stage was overrun
with cavalry and noisy with the clang of steel and the roar of the
carronade.

The most important episodes herein are of history,--so romantic was
the life of that time and region.  The marriage is almost literally
a matter of record.

A good part of the author's life has been spent among the children
of those old raiders--Yankee and Canadian--of the north and south
shores of the big river.  Many a tale of the camp and the night
ride he has heard in the firelight of a winter's evening; long
familiar to him are the ruins of a rustic life more splendid in its
day than any north of Virginia.  So his color is not all of books,
but of inheritance and of memory as well.

The purpose of this tale is to extend acquaintance with the plain
people who sweat and bled and limped and died for this Republic of
ours.  Darius, or "D'ri" as the woods folk called him, was a
pure-bred Yankee, quaint, rugged, wise, truthful; Ramon had the
hardy traits of a Puritan father, softened by the more romantic
temperament of a French mother.  They had no more love of fighting
than they had need of it.




CONTENTS


PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER
 I.
 II.
 III.
 IV.
 V.
 VI.
 VII.
 VIII.
 IX.
 X.
 XI.
 XII.
 XIII.
 XIV.
 XV.
 XVI.
 XVII.
 XVIII.
 XIX.
 XX.
 XXI.
 XXII.
 XXIII.
 XXIV.
 XXV.
 XXVI.
 XXVII.

[Transcriber's Note: The chapters in the original text were numbered,
but had no titles.]


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

LOUISE

D'RI AND I

I COULD NOT TELL WHICH OF THE TWO GIRLS I LOVED THE BETTER

HE WOULD HAVE FOUGHT TO THE DEATH IF I HAD BUT GIVEN HIM WORD

"COME, NOW, MY PRETTY PRISONER"

"WE 'LL TEK CARE O' THE OL' BRIG"

WE WERE BOTH NEAR BREAKING DOWN

"THEN I LEAVE ALL FOR YOU"




INTRODUCTION

From a letter of Captain Darius Hawkins, U. S. A., introducing
Ramon Bell to the Comte de Chaumont:--


"MY DEAR COUNT: I commend to your kind offices my young friend
Ramon Bell, the son of Captain Bell, a cavalry officer who long ago
warmed his sword in the blood of the British on many a
battle-field.  The young man is himself a born soldier, as brave as
he is tall and handsome.  He has been but a month in the army, yet
I have not before seen a man who could handle horse and sword as if
they were part of him.  He is a gentleman, also, and one after your
own heart, I know, my dear count, you will do everything you can to
further the work intrusted to him.

  "Your obedient servant,
  "DARIUS HAWKINS."


From a letter of Joseph Bonaparte, Comte de Survilliers,
introducing his friend Colonel Ramon Bell to Napoleon III of
France:--


"He has had a career romantic and interesting beyond that of any
man I have met in America.  In the late war with England he was the
master of many situations most perilous and difficult.  The scars
of ten bullets and four sabre-thrusts are on his body.  It gives me
great pleasure, my dear Louis, to make you to know one of the most
gallant and chivalrous of men.  He has other claims upon your
interest and hospitality, with which he will acquaint you in his
own delightful way."




D'RI AND I

I

A poet may be a good companion, but, so far as I know, he is ever
the worst of fathers.  Even as grandfather he is too near, for one
poet can lay a streak of poverty over three generations.  Doubt not
I know whereof I speak, dear reader, for my mother's father was a
poet--a French poet, too, whose lines had crossed the Atlantic long
before that summer of 1770 when he came to Montreal.  He died
there, leaving only debts and those who had great need of a better
legacy--my mother and grandmother.

As to my father, he had none of that fatal folly in him.  He was a
mountaineer of Vermont--a man of steely sinews that took well to
the grip of a sword.  He cut his way to fame in the Northern army
when the British came first to give us battle, and a bloody way it
was.  I have now a faded letter from Ethan Allen, grim old warrior,
in which he calls my father "the best swordsman that ever straddled
a horse." He was a "gallous chap" in his youth, so said my
grandmother, with a great love of good clothes and gunpowder.  He
went to Montreal, as a boy, to be educated; took lessons in
fencing, fought a duel, ran away from school, and came home with
little learning and a wife.  Punished by disinheritance, he took a
farm, and left the plough to go into battle.

I wonder often that my mother could put up with the stress and
hardship of his life, for she had had gentle breeding, of which I
knew little until I was grown to manhood, when I came to know also
what a woman will do for the love of her heart.  I remember well
those tales of knights and ladies she used to tell me as we sat
together of an evening, and also those adventures of her own
knight, my good father, in the war with the British.  My love of
arms and of a just quarrel began then.

After the war came hard times.  My father had not prospered
handsomely, when, near the end of the summer of 1803, he sold his
farm, and we all started West, over rough trails and roadways.
There were seven of us, bound for the valley of the St.
Lawrence--my father and mother, my two sisters, my grandmother,
D'ri, the hired man, and myself, then a sturdy boy of ten.  We had
an ox-team and -cart that carried our provision, the sacred feather
beds of my mother, and some few other things.

[Illustration: D'Ri and I.]

We drove with us the first flock of sheep that ever went West.
There were forty of them, and they filled our days with trouble.
But for our faithful dog Rover, I fear we should have lost heart
and left them to the wild wolves.  The cart had a low cover of
canvas, and my mother and grandmother sat on the feather beds, and
rode with small comfort even where the roads were level.  My father
let me carry my little pet rooster in a basket that hung from the
cart-axle when not in my keeping.  The rooster had a harder time
than any of us, I fancy, for the days were hot and the roads rough.
He was always panting, with open mouth and thoughtful eye, when I
lifted the cover.  But every day he gave us an example of
cheerfulness not wholly without effect.  He crowed triumphantly,
betimes, in the hot basket, even when he was being tumbled about on
the swamp ways.  Nights I always found a perch for him on the limb
of a near tree, above the reach of predatory creatures.  Every
morning, as the dawn showed faintly in the tree-tops, he gave it a
lusty cheer, napping his wings with all the seeming of delight.
Then, often, while the echo rang, I would open my eyes and watch
the light grow in .the dusky cavern of the woods.  He would sit
dozing awhile after the first outbreak, and presently as the flood
of light grew clearer, lift himself a little, take another peep at
the sky, and crow again, turning his head to hear those weird,
mocking roosters of the timber-land.  Then, shortly, I would hear
my father poking the fire or saying, as he patted the rooster:
"Sass 'em back, ye noisy little brat!  Thet 's right: holler.  Tell
D'ri it's time t' bring some wood fer the fire."

In a few minutes the pot and kettle would be boiling and the camp
all astir.  We had trout and partridge and venison a-plenty for our
meals, that were served in dishes of tin.  Breakfast over, we
packed our things.  The cart went on ahead, my father bringing the
oxen, while I started the sheep with D'ri.

Those sheep were as many thorns in our flesh that day we made off
in the deep woods from Lake Champlain.  Travel was new to them, and
what with tearing through thickets and running wild in every slash,
they kept us jumping.  When they were leg-weary and used to travel,
they began to go quietly.  But slow work it was at best, ten or
twelve miles a day being all we could do, for the weather was hot
and our road like the way of the transgressor.  Our second night in
the woods we could hear the wolves howling as we camped at dusk.
We built our fire near the shore of a big pond, its still water,
framed in the vivid green of young tamaracks.  A great hill rose on
the farther side of it, with galleries of timber sloping to the
summit, and peopled with many birds.  We huddled the sheep together
in a place where the trees were thick, while father brought from
the cart a coil of small rope.  We wound it about the trees, so the
sheep were shut in a little yard.  After supper we all sat by the
fire, while D'ri told how he had been chased by wolves in the
beaver country north of us.

D'ri was an odd character.  He had his own way of expressing the
three degrees of wonder, admiration, and surprise.
"Jerushy!"--accented on the second syllable--was the positive,
"Jerushy Jane!" the comparative, and "Jerushy Jane Pepper!" the
superlative.  Who that poor lady might be I often wondered, but
never ventured to inquire.  In times of stress I have heard him
swear by "Judas Priest," but never more profanely.  In his youth he
had been a sailor on the lake, when some artist of the needle had
tattooed a British jack on the back of his left hand--a thing he
covered, of shame now, when he thought of it.  His right hand had
lost its forefinger in a sawmill.  His rifle was distinguished by
the name of Beeswax,--"Ol' Beeswax" he called it sometimes,--for no
better reason than that it was "easy spoke an' hed a kind uv a
powerful soun' tew it." He had a nose like a shoemaker's thumb:
there was a deep incurve from its wide tip to his forehead.  He had
a large, gray, inquiring eye and the watchful habit of the
woodsman.  Somewhere in the midst of a story he would pause and
peer thoughtfully into the distance, meanwhile feeling the
pipe-stem with his lips, and then resume the narrative as suddenly
as he had stopped.  He was a lank and powerful man, six feet tall
in his stockings.  He wore a thin beard that had the appearance of
parched grass on his ruddy countenance.  In the matter of hair,
nature had treated him with a generosity most unusual.  His heavy
shock was sheared off square above his neck.

That evening, as he lay on his elbow in the firelight, D'ri had
just entered the eventful field of reminiscence.  The women were
washing the dishes; my father had gone to the spring for water.
D'ri pulled up suddenly, lifted his hat of faded felt, and
listened, peering into the dusk.

"Seems t' me them wolves is comin' nearer," he said thoughtfully.

Their cries were echoing in the far timber.  We all rose and
listened.  In a moment my father came hurrying back with his pail
of water.

"D'ri," said he, quietly, as he threw some wood on the fire, "they
smell mutton.  Mek the guns ready.  We may git a few pelts.
There's a big bounty on 'em here 'n York State."

We all stood about the fire listening as the wolves came nearer.

"It 's the sheep thet brings 'em," said my father.

"Quite a consid'able number on 'em, tew," said D'ri, as he stood
cleaning the bore of his rifle.

My young sisters began to cry.

"Need n't be scairt," said father.  "They won't come very near.
'Fraider of us 'n we are o' 'em, a good deal."

"Tow-w-w!" said D'ri, with a laugh.  "They 'll be apt t' stub ther
toes 'fore they git very nigh us."

This did not quite agree with the tales he had previously been
telling.  I went for my sword, and buckled its belt about me, the
scabbard hanging to my heels.  Presently some creature came
bounding over the brush.  I saw him break through the wall of
darkness and stop quickly in the firelight.  Then D'ri brought him
down with his rifle.

"Started him up back there 'n the woods a few mild," said D'ri.
"He was mekin' fer this 'ere pond--thet 's what he was dewin'."

"What for?" I inquired.

"'Cause fer the reason why he knowed he would n't mek no tracks 'n
the water, ner no scent," said D'ri, with some show of contempt for
my ignorance.

The deer lay floundering in the briers some fifty feet away.  My
father ran with his knife and put him quickly out of misery.  Then
we hauled the carcass to clear ground.

"Let it lie where 't is fer now," said he, as we came back to the
fire.  Then he got our two big traps out of the cart and set them
beside the carcass and covered them with leaves.  The howling of
the wolves had ceased.  I could hear only the creaking of a dead
limb high above us, and the bellow of frogs in the near pond.  We
had fastened the trap chains and were coming back to the fire, when
the dog rose, barking fiercely; then we heard the crack of D'ri's
rifle.

"More 'n fifty wolves eroun' here," he whispered as we ran up to
him.  "Never see sech a snag on 'em."

The sheep were stirring nervously.  Near the pen a wolf lay kicking
where D'ri had dropped him.

"Rest on 'em snooked off when the gun hollered," he went on,
whispering as before.

My mother and grandmother sat with my sisters in the cart, hushing
their murmurs of fear.  Early in the evening I had tied Rover to
the cart-wheel, where he was growling hotly, impatient of the leash.

"See?" said D'ri, pointing with his finger.  "See 'em?--there 'n
the dark by thet air big hemlock."

We could make out a dim stir in the shadows where he pointed.
Presently we heard the spring and rattle of a trap.  As we turned
that way, the other trap took hold hard; as it sprang, we could
hear a wolf yelp.

"Meks 'em holler," said D'ri, "thet ol' he-trap does, when it teks
holt.  Stay here by the sheep, 'n' I 'll go over 'n' give 'em
somethin' fer spraint ankles."

Other wolves were swarming over the dead deer, and the two in the
traps were snarling and snapping at them.  My father and D'ri fired
at the bunch, killing one of the captives and another--the largest
wolf I ever saw.  The pack had slunk away as they heard the rifles.
Our remaining captive struggled to get free, but in a moment D'ri
had brained him with an axe.  He and my father reset our traps and
hauled the dead wolves into the firelight.  There they began to
skin them, for the bounty was ten dollars for each in the new
towns--a sum that made our adventure profitable.  I built fires on
the farther side of the sheep, and, as they brightened, I could
see, here and there, the gleaming eyes of a wolf in the darkness.
I was up all night heaping wood upon the fires, while D'ri and my
father skinned the wolves and dressed the deer.  I remember, as
they worked, D'ri calmed himself with the low-sung, familiar music
of:--

  Li too rul I oorul I oorul I ay.

They had just finished when the cock crew.

"Holler, ye gol-dum little cuss!"   D'ri shouted as he went over to
him.  "Can't no snookin' wolf crack our bones fer _us_.  Peeled
'em--thet 's what we done tew 'em!  Tuk 'n' knocked 'em head over
heels.  Judas Priest!  He can peck a man's finger some, can't he?"

The light was coming, and he went off to the spring for water,
while I brought the spider and pots.  The great, green-roofed
temple of the woods, that had so lately rung with the howl of
wolves, began to fill with far wandering echoes of sweet song.

"They was a big cat over there by the spring las' night," said
D'ri, as we all sat down to breakfast.  "Tracks bigger 'n a
griddle!  Smelt the mutton, mos' likely."

"Like mutton?" I inquired.

"Yis-sir-ee, they dew," said he.  "Kind o' mince-pie fer 'em.  Like
deer-meat, tew.  Snook eroun' the ponds efter dark.  Ef they see a
deer 'n the water they wallop 'im quicker 'n lightnin'; jump right
in k'slap 'n' tek 'im."

We were off at sunrise, on a road that grew rougher every mile.  At
noon we came to a river so swollen as to make a dangerous ford.
After dinner my father waded in, going hips under where the water
was deep and swift.  Then he cut a long pole and took my mother on
his shoulders and entered the broad stream, steadying himself with
the pole.  When she had got down safe on the other side, he came
back for grandmother and my sisters, and took them over in the same
way.  D'ri, meanwhile, bound up the feather beds and carried them
on his head, leaving the dog and me to tend the sheep.  All our
blankets and clothing were carried across in the same manner.  Then
I mounted the cart, with my rooster, lashing the oxen till they
took to the stream.  They had tied the bell-wether to the axle,
and, as I started, men and dog drove the sheep after me.  The oxen
wallowed in the deep water, and our sheep, after some hesitation,
began to swim.  The big cart floated like a raft part of the way,
and we landed with no great difficulty.  Farther on, the road
became nothing better than a rude trail, where, frequently, we had
to stop and chop through heavy logs and roll them away.  On a steep
hillside the oxen fell, breaking the tongue, and the cart tipped
sidewise and rolled bottom up.  My rooster was badly flung about,
and began crowing and flapping as the basket settled.  When I
opened it, he flew out, running for his life, as if finally
resolved to quit us.  Fortunately, we were all walking, and nobody
was hurt.  My father and D'ri were busy half a day "righting up,"
as they called it, mending the tongue and cover, and getting the
cart on its wheels and down the steep pitch.

After two days of trail travel we came out on the Chateaugay road,
stopping awhile to bait our sheep and cattle on the tame grass and
tender briers.  It was a great joy to see the clear road, with here
and there a settler's cabin, its yard aglow with the marigold, the
hollyhock, and the fragrant honeysuckle.  We got to the tavern at
Chateaugay about dusk, and put up for the night, as becomes a
Christian.

Next afternoon we came to rough roads again, camping at sundown
along the shore of a noisy brook.  The dog began to bark fiercely
while supper was making, and scurried off into a thicket.

D'ri was stooping over, cooking the meat.  He rose and listened.

"Thet air dog's a leetle scairt," said he.  "Guess we better go 'n'
see whut 's the matter."

He took his rifle and I my sword,--I never thought of another
weapon,--making off through the brush.  The dog came whining to
D'ri and rushing on, eager for us to follow.  We hurried after him,
and in a moment D'ri and the dog, who were ahead of me, halted
suddenly.

"It 's a painter," said D'ri, as I came up.  "See 'im in thet air
tree-top.  I 'll larrup 'im with Ol' Beeswax, then jes' like es not
he 'll mek some music.  Better grab holt o' the dog.  'T won't dew
fer 'im to git tew rambunctious, er the fust thing he knows he
won't hev no insides in 'im."

I could see the big cat clinging high in the top boughs of a birch
and looking calmly down at us.  The tree-top swayed, quivering, as
it held the great dun beast.  My heart was like to smother me when
D'ri raised his rifle and took aim.  The dog broke away at the
crack of it.  The painter reeled and spat; then he came crashing
through the branches, striking right and left with his fore paws to
save himself.  He hit the ground heavily, and the dog was on him.
The painter lay as if dead.  Before I could get near, Rover began
shaking him by the neck.  He came to suddenly, and struck the dog
with a front claw, dragging him down.  A loud yelp followed the
blow.  Quick as a flash D'ri had caught the painter by the tail and
one hind leg.  With a quick surge of his great, slouching
shoulders, he flung him at arm's-length.  The lithe body doubled on
a tree trunk, quivered, and sank down, as the dog came free.  In a
jiffy I had run my sword through the cat's belly and made an end of
him.

"Knew 'f he got them hind hooks on thet air dog he 'd rake his ribs
right off," said D'ri, as he lifted his hat to scratch his head.
"Would n't 'a' left nothin' but the backbone,--nut a thing,--an'
thet would n't 'a' been a real fust-class one, nuther."

When D'ri was very positive, his words were well braced with
negatives.

We took the painter by the hind legs and dragged him through the
bushes to our camp.  The dog had a great rip across his shoulder,
where the claws had struck and made furrows; but he felt a mighty
pride in our capture, and never had a better appetite for a meal.

There were six more days of travel in that journey--travel so
fraught with hardships, I wonder that some days we had the heart to
press on.  More than all, I wonder that the frail body of my mother
was equal to it.  But I am writing no vain record of endurance.  I
have written enough to suggest what moving meant in the wilderness.
There is but one more color in the scenes of that journey.  The
fourth day after we left Chateaugay my grandmother fell ill and
died suddenly there in the deep woods.  We were far from any
village, and sorrow slowed our steps.  We pushed on, coming soon to
a sawmill and a small settlement.  They told us there was neither
minister nor undertaker within forty miles.  My father and D'ri
made the coffin of planed lumber, and lined it with deerskin, and
dug the grave on top of a high hill.  When all was ready, my
father, who had always been much given to profanity, albeit I know
he was a kindly and honest man with no irreverence in his heart,
called D'ri aside.

"D'ri," said he, "ye 've alwus been more proper-spoken than I hev.
Say a word o' prayer?"

"Don't much b'lieve I could," said he, thoughtfully.  "I hev been
t' meeting but I hain't never been no great hand fer prayin'."

"'T wouldn't sound right nohow, fer me t' pray," said my father, "I
got s' kind o' rough when I was in the army."

"'Fraid it 'll come a leetle unhandy fer me," said D'ri, with a
look of embarrassment, "but I don't never shirk a tough job ef it
hes t' be done."

Then he stepped forward, took off his faded hat, his brow wrinkling
deep, and said, in a drawling preacher tone that had no sound of
D'ri in it: "O God, tek care o' gran'ma.  Help us t' go on careful,
an' when we 're riled, help us t' keep er mouths shet.  O God, help
the ol' cart, an' the ex in pertic'lar.  An' don't be noway hard on
us.  Amen."





II

June was half over when we came to our new home in the town of
Madrid--then a home only for the foxes and the fowls of the air and
their wild kin of the forest.  The road ran through a little valley
thick with timber and rock-bound on the north.  There were four
families within a mile of us, all comfortably settled in small log
houses.  For temporary use we built a rude bark shanty that had a
partition of blankets, living in this primitive manner until my
father and D'ri had felled the timber and built a log house.  We
brought flour from Malone,--a dozen sacks or more,--and while they
were building, I had to supply my mother with fish and game and
berries for the table--a thing easy enough to do in that land of
plenty.  When the logs were cut and hewn I went away, horseback, to
Canton for a jug of rum.  I was all day and half the night going
and coming, and fording the Grasse took me stirrups under.

Then the neighbors came to the raising--a jolly company that
shouted "Hee, oh, hee!" as they lifted each heavy log to its place,
and grew noisier quaffing the odorous red rum, that had a mighty
good look to me, although my father would not hear of my tasting
it.  When it was all over, there was nothing to pay but our
gratitude.

While they were building bunks, I went off to sawmill with the oxen
for boards and shingles.  Then, shortly, we had a roof over us, and
floors to walk on, and that luxury D'ri called a "pyaz," although
it was not more than a mere shelf with a roof over it.  We chinked
the logs with moss and clay at first, putting up greased paper in
the window spaces.  For months we knew not the luxury of the glass
pane.

That summer we "changed work" with the neighbors, and after we had
helped them awhile they turned to in the clearing of our farm.  We
felled the trees in long, bushy windrows, heaping them up with
brush and small wood when the chopping was over.  That done, we
fired the rows, filling the deep of heaven with smoke, as it seemed
to me, and lighting the night with great billows of flame.

By mid-autumn we had cleared to the stumps a strip half down the
valley from our door.  Then we turned to on the land of our
neighbors, my time counting half, for I was sturdy and could swing
the axe to a line, and felt a joy in seeing the chips fly.  But my
father kept an eye on me, and held me back as with a leash,

My mother was often sorely tried for the lack of things common as
dirt these better days.  Frequently our only baking-powder was
white lye, made by dropping ash-cinders into wafer.  Our cinders
were made by letting the sap of green timber drip into hot ashes.
Often deer's tallow, bear's grease, or raccoon's oil served for
shortening, and the leaves of the wild raspberry for tea.  Our
neighbors went to mill at Canton--a journey of five days, going and
coming, with an ox-team, and beset with many difficulties.  Then
one of them hollowed the top of a stump for his mortar and tied his
pestle to the bough of a tree.  With a rope he drew the bough down,
which, as it sprang back, lifted the pestle that ground his grain.

But money was the rarest of all things in our neighborhood those
days.  Pearlash, black-salts, West India pipe-staves, and rafts of
timber brought cash, but no other products of the early settler.
Late that fall my mother gave a dance, a rude but hearty pleasuring
that followed a long conference in which my father had a part.
They all agreed to turn to, after snowfall, on the river-land, cut
a raft of timber, and send it to Montreal in the spring.  Our
things had come, including D'ri's fiddle, so that we had chairs and
bedsteads and other accessories of life not common among our
neighbors.  My mother had a few jewels and some fine old furniture
that her father had given her,--really beautiful things, I have
since come to know,--and she showed them to those simple folk with
a mighty pride in her eyes.

Business over, D'ri took down his fiddle, that hung on the wall,
and made the strings roar as he tuned them.  Then he threw his long
right leg over the other, and, as be drew the bow, his big foot
began to pat the floor a good pace away.  His chin lifted, his
fingers flew, his bow quickened, the notes seemed to whirl and
scurry, light-footed as a rout of fairies.  Meanwhile the toe of
his right boot counted the increasing tempo until it came up and
down like a ratchet.

Darius Olin was mostly of a slow and sober manner.  To cross his
legs and feel a fiddle seemed to throw his heart open and put him
in full gear.  Then his thoughts were quick, his eyes merry, his
heart was a fountain of joy.  He would lean forward, swaying his
head, and shouting "Yip!" as the bow hurried.  D'ri was a
hard-working man, but the feel of the fiddle warmed and limbered
him from toe to finger.  He was over-modest, making light of his
skill if he ever spoke of it, and had no ear for a compliment.
While our elders were dancing, I and others of my age were playing
games in the kitchen--kissing-games with a rush and tumble in them,
puss-in-the-corner, hunt-the-squirrel, and the like.  Even then I
thought I was in love with pretty Rose Merriman.  She would never
let me kiss her, even though I had caught her and had the right.
This roundelay, sung while one was in the centre of a circling
group, ready to grab at the last word, brings back to me the sweet
faces, the bright eyes, the merry laughter of that night and others
like it:

  Oh, hap-py is th' mil-ler who
  lives by him-self!  As th' wheel gos round, he
  gath-ers in 'is wealth, One hand on the
  hop-per and the oth-er on the bag; As the
  wheel goes round, he cries out, "Grab!"  Oh,
  ain't you a lit-tle bit a-shamed o' this, Oh,
  ain't you a lit-tle bit a-sham'd o' this, Oh,
  ain't you a lit-tle bit a-sham'd o' this--To
  stay all night for one sweet kiss?  Oh, etc.

[Transcriber's note:  A Lilypond (www.lilypond.org) rendition of
this song is at the end of this e-book.]

My mother gave me all the schooling I had that winter.  A year
later they built a schoolhouse, not quite a mile away, where I
found more fun than learning.  After two years I shouldered my axe
and went to the river-land with the choppers every winter morning.

My father was stronger than any of them except D'ri, who could
drive his axe to the bit every blow, day after day.  He had the
strength of a giant, and no man I knew tried ever to cope with him.
By the middle of May we began rolling in for the raft.  As soon as
they were floating, the logs were withed together and moored in
sections.  The bay became presently a quaking, redolent plain of
timber.

When we started the raft, early in June, that summer of 1810, and
worked it into the broad river with sweeps and poles, I was aboard
with D'ri and six other men, bound for the big city of which I had
heard so much.  I was to visit the relatives of my mother and spend
a year in the College de St. Pierre.  We had a little frame house
on a big platform, back of the middle section of the raft, with
bunks in it, where we ate and slept and told stories.  Lying on the
platform, there was a large flat stone that held our fires for both
cooking and comfort.  D'ri called me in the dusk of the early
morning, the first night out, and said we were near the Sault.  I
got up, rubbed my eyes, and felt a mighty thrill as I heard the
roar of the great rapids and the creaking withes, and felt the lift
of the speeding water.  D'ri said they had broken the raft into
three parts, ours being hindmost.  The roaring grew louder, until
my shout was as a whisper in a hurricane.  The logs began to heave
and fall, and waves came rushing through them.  Sheets of spray
shot skyward, coming down like a shower.  We were shaken as by an
earthquake in the rough water.  Then the roar fell back of us, and
the raft grew steady.

"Gin us a tough twist," said D'ri, shouting down at me--"kind uv a
twist o' the bit 'n' a kick 'n the side."

It was coming daylight as we sailed into still water, and then D'ri
put his hands to his mouth and hailed loudly, getting an answer out
of the gloom ahead.

"Gol-dum ef it hain't the power uv a thousan' painters!" D'ri
continued, laughing as he spoke.  "Never see nothin' jump 'n' kick
'n' spit like thet air, 'less it hed fur on--never 'n all my born
days."

D'ri's sober face showed dimly now in the dawn.  His hands were on
his hips; his faded felt hat was tipped sideways.  His boots and
trousers were quarrelling over that disputed territory between his
knees and ankles.  His boots had checked the invasion.

"Smooth water now," said he, thoughtfully, "Seems terrible still.
Hain't a breath uv air stirrin'.  Jerushy Jane Pepper!  Wha' does
thet mean?"

He stepped aside quickly as some bits of bark and a small bough of
hemlock fell at our feet.  Then a shower of pine needles came
slowly down, scattering over us and hitting the timber with a faint
hiss.  Before we could look up, a dry stick as long as a log fell
rattling on the platform.

"Never see no sech dom's afore," said D'ri, looking upward.
"Things don't seem t' me t' be actin' eggzac'ly nat'ral--nut jest
es I 'd like t' see 'em."

As the light came clearer, we saw clouds heaped black and blue over
the tree-tops in the southwest.  We stood a moment looking.  The
clouds were heaping higher, pulsing with light, roaring with
thunder.  What seemed to be a flock of pigeons rose suddenly above
the far forest, and then fell as if they had all been shot.  A gust
of wind coasted down the still ether, fluttering like a rag and
shaking out a few drops of rain.

"Look there!" I shouted, pointing aloft.

"Hark!" said D'ri, sharply, raising his hand of three fingers.

We could hear a far sound like that of a great wagon rumbling on a
stony road.

"The Almighty 's whippin' his hosses," said D'ri.  "Looks es ef he
wus plungin' 'em through the woods 'way yender.  Look a' thet air
sky."

The cloud-masses were looming rapidly.  They had a glow like that
of copper.

"Tryin' t' put a ruf on the world," my companion shouted.
"Swingin' ther hammers hard on the rivets."

A little peak of green vapor showed above the sky-line.  It loomed
high as we looked.  It grew into a lofty column, reeling far above
the forest.  Below it we could see a mighty heaving in the
tree-tops.  Something like an immense bird was hurtling and
pirouetting in the air above them.  The tower of green looked now
like a great flaring bucket hooped with fire and overflowing with
darkness.  Our ears were full of a mighty voice out of the heavens.
A wind came roaring down some tideway of the air like water in a
flume.  It seemed to tap the sky.  Before I could gather my
thoughts we were in a torrent of rushing air, and the raft had
begun to heave and toss.  I felt D'ri take my hand in his.  I could
just see his face, for the morning had turned dark suddenly.  His
lips were moving, but I could hear nothing he said.  Then he lay
flat, pulling me down.  Above and around were all the noises that
ever came to the ear of man--the beating of drums, the bellowing of
cattle, the crash of falling trees, the shriek of women, the rattle
of machinery, the roar of waters, the crack of rifles, the blowing
of trumpets, the braying of asses, and sounds the like of which I
have never heard and pray God I may not hear again, one and then
another dominating the mighty chorus.  Behind us, in the gloom, I
could see, or thought I could see, the reeling mass of green
ploughing the water, like a ship with chains of gold flashing over
bulwarks of fire.  In a moment something happened of which I have
never had any definite notion.  I felt the strong arm of D'ri
clasping me tightly.  I heard the thump and roll and rattle of the
logs heaping above us; I felt the water washing over me; but I
could see nothing.  I knew the raft had doubled; it would fall and
grind our bones: but I made no effort to save myself.  And thinking
how helpless I felt is the last I remember of the great windfall of
June 3, 1810, the path of which may be seen now, fifty years after
that memorable day, and I suppose it will be visible long after my
bones have crumbled.  I thought I had been sleeping when I came to;
at least, I had dreamed.  I was in some place where it was dark and
still.  I could hear nothing but the drip of water; I could feel
the arm of D'ri about me, and I called to him, and then I felt him
stir.

"Thet you, Ray?" said he, lifting his head.

"Yes," I answered.  "Where are we?"

"Judas Priest!  I ain' no idee.  Jes' woke up.  Been a-layin' here
tryin' t' think.  Ye hurt?"

"Guess not," said I.

"Ain't ye got no pains or aches nowhere 'n yer body?"

"Head aches a little," said I.

He rose to his elbow, and made a light with his flint and tinder,
and looked at me.

"Got a goose-egg on yer for'ard," said he, and then I saw there was
blood on his face.

"Ef it hed n't been fer the withes they 'd 'a' ground us t' powder."

We were lying alongside the little house, and the logs were leaning
to it above us.

"Jerushy Jane Pepper!" D'ri exclaimed, rising to his knees.  "'S
whut I call a twister."

He began to whittle a piece of the splintered platform.  Then he
lit a shaving.

"They 's ground here," said he, as he began to kindle a fire,
"ground a-plenty right under us."

The firelight gave us a good look at our cave under the logs.  It
was about ten feet long and probably half as high.  The logs had
crashed through the side of the house in one or two places, and its
roof was a wreck.

"Hungry?" said D'ri, as he broke a piece of board on his knee.

"Yes," I answered.

"So 'm I," said he, "hungrier 'n a she-wolf.  They 's some bread
'n' ven'son there 'n the house; we better try t' git 'em."

An opening under the logs let me around the house corner to its
door.  I was able to work my way through the latter, although it
was choked with heavy timbers.  Inside I could hear the wash of the
river, and through its shattered window on the farther wall I could
see between the heaped logs a glow of sunlit water.  I handed our
axe through a break in the wall, and then D'ri cut away some of the
baseboards and joined me.  We had our meal cooking in a few
minutes--our dinner, really, for D'ri said it was near noon.
Having eaten, we crawled out of the window, and then D'ri began to
pry the logs apart.

"Ain't much 'fraid o' their tumblin' on us," said he.  "They 're
withed so they 'll stick together."

We got to another cave under the logs, at the water's edge, after
an hour of crawling and prying.  A side of the raft was in the
water.

"Got t' dive," said D'ri, "an' swim fer daylight."

A long swim it was, but we came up in clear water, badly out of
breath.  We swam around the timber, scrambling over a dead cow, and
up-shore.  The ruined raft was torn and tumbled into a very
mountain of logs at the edge of the water.  The sun was shining
clear, and the air was still.  Limbs of trees, bits of torn cloth,
a broken hay-rake, fragments of wool, a wagon-wheel, and two dead
sheep were scattered along the shore.  Where we had seen the
whirlwind coming, the sky was clear, and beneath it was a great gap
in the woods, with ragged walls of evergreen.  Here and there in
the gap a stub was standing, trunk and limbs naked.

"Jerushy Jane Pepper!" D'ri exclaimed, with a pause after each
word.  "It's cut a swath wider 'n this river.  Don't b'lieve a
mouse could 'a' lived where the timber 's down over there."

Our sweepers and the other sections of the raft were nowhere in
sight.




III

We left the logs, and walked to Cornwall, and took a sloop down the
river.  It was an American  boat, bound for Quebec with
pipe-staves.  It had put in at Cornwall when the storm began.  The
captain said that the other sections of our raft had passed safely.
In the dusk of the early evening a British schooner brought us to.

"Wonder what that means?" said the skipper, straining his eyes in
the dusk,

A small boat, with three officers, came along-side.  They climbed
aboard, one of them carrying a lantern.  They were armed with
swords and pistols.  We sat in silence around the cockpit.  They
scanned each of us carefully in the light of the lantern.  It
struck me as odd they should look so closely at our hands.

"Wha' d' ye want?" the skipper demanded.  "This man," said one of
them, pointing to D'ri.  "He's a British sailor.  We arrest him--"

He got no farther.  D'ri's hand had gone out like the paw of a
painter and sent him across the cockpit.  Before I knew what was
up, I saw the lank body of D'ri leaping backward into the river.  I
heard a splash and a stroke of his long arms, and then all was
still.  I knew he was swimming under water to get away.  The
officers made for their boat.  My blood was up, and I sprang at the
last of them, giving him a hard shove as he was climbing over, so
that he fell on the boat, upsetting it.  They had business enough
then for a little, and began hailing for help.  I knew I had done a
foolish thing, and ran forward, climbing out upon the bowsprit, and
off with my coat and vest, and dived into the dark water.  I swam
under as long as I could hold my breath, and then came up quietly,
turning on my back in the quick current, and floating so my face
only was above water.  It had grown dark, and I could see nothing
but the glimmer of the stars above me.  My boots were heavy and
dragged hard.  I was going fast with the swift water, for at first
I had heard a great hubbub on the schooner; but now its voices had
grown faint.  Other sounds were filling my ear.

After dark it is weird business to be swimming in strange
water--the throne of mystery, of a thousand terrors.  It is as if
one's grave, full of the blackness of the undiscovered country,
were pursuing him and ever yawning beneath his body.  And that big
river is the very tiger of waters, now stealing on pussy-footed,
now rushing with cat-like swiftness, hissing and striking with
currents that have in them mighty sinews.  I was now companion of
those cold-mouthed monsters of the river bottom, many of which I
had seen.  What if one should lay hold on me and drag me under?
Then I thought of rapids that might smother me with their spray or
dash me to hidden rocks.  Often I lifted my ears, marvelling at the
many voices of the river.  Sometimes I thought I heard a roaring
like that of the Sault, but it was only a ripple growing into
fleecy waves that rocked me as in a cradle.  The many sounds were
above, below, and beside me, some weird and hollow and unearthly.
I could hear rocks rolling over in their sleep on the bottom, and,
when the water was still, a sound like the cropping of lily-pads
away off on the river-margin.  The bellowing of a cow terrified me
as it boomed over the sounding sheet of water.  The river rang like
a mighty drum when a peal of far thunder beat upon it.  I put out
my hands to take a stroke or two as I lay on my back, and felt
something floating under water.  The feel of it filled me with
horror.  I swam faster; it was at my heels.  I knew full well what
my hand had touched--a human head floating face downward: I could
feel the hair in my fingers.  I turned and swam hard, but still it
followed me.  My knees hit upon it, and then my feet.  Again and
again I could feel it as I kicked.  Its hand seemed to be clutching
my trousers.  I thought I should never get clear of the ghastly
thing.  I remember wondering if it were the body of poor D'ri.  I
turned aside, swimming another way, and then I felt it no more.

In the dead of the night I heard suddenly a kind of throbbing in
the breast of the river.  It grew to a noisy heart-beat as I
listened.  Again and again I heard it, striking, plashing, like a
footfall, and coming nearer.  Somehow I got the notion of a giant,
like those of whom my mother had told me long ago, striding in the
deep river.  I could hear his boots dripping as he lifted them.  I
got an odd fear that he would step on me.  Then I heard music and
lifted my ears above water.  It was a voice singing in the
distance,--it must have been a mile off,--and what I had taken for
a near footfall shrank away.  I knew now it was the beat of oars in
some far bay.

A long time after I had ceased to hear it, something touched my
shoulder and put me in a panic.  Turning over, I got a big mouthful
of water.  Then I saw it was a gang of logs passing me, and quickly
caught one.  Now, to me the top side of a log was as easy and
familiar as a rocking-chair.  In a moment I was sitting comfortably
on my captive.  A bit of rubbish, like that the wind had sown,
trailed after the gang of logs, I felt it over, finding a straw hat
and a piece of board some three feet long, with which latter I
paddled vigorously.

It must have been long past midnight when I came to an island
looming in the dark ahead.  I sculled for it, stranding on a rocky
beach, and alighted, hauling the log ashore.  The moon came out as
I stood wringing my trouser legs.  I saw the island rose high and
narrow and was thickly wooded.  I remember saying something to
myself, when I heard a quick stir in the bushes near me.  Looking
up, I saw a tall figure.  Then came a familiar voice:--

"Thet you, Ray?  Judas Priest!"

I was filled with joy at the sight of D'ri, and put my arms about
him and lifted him off his feet, and, faith!  I know my eyes were
wet as my trousers.  Then, as we sat down, I told him how I had
taken to the river.

"Lucky ye done it!" said he.  "Jerushy Jane!  It is terrible lucky!
They 'd 'a' tuk ye sartin.  Somebody see thet jack on the back o'
my hand, there 'n Cornwall, 'n' put 'em efter me.  But I was bound
'n' detarmined they 'd never tek me alive, never!  Ef I ever dew
any fightin', 't ain't a-goin' t' be fer England, nut by a side o'
sole-leather.  I med up my mind I 'd begin the war right then an'
there."

"That fellow never knew what hit him," I remarked.  "He did n't get
up for half a minute."

"Must 'a' swatted 'im powerful," said D'ri, as he felt his
knuckles.  "Gol-dum ther picturs!  Go 'n' try t' yank a man right
off a boat like thet air when they hain' no right t' tech 'im.   Ef
I 'd 'a' hed Ol' Beeswax, some on 'em 'd 'a' got hurt."

"How did you get here?" I inquired.

"Swum," said he.  "Could n't go nowheres else.  Current fetched me
here.  Splits et the head o' the island--boun' ter land ye right
here.  Got t' be movin'.  They 'll be efter us, mebbe--'s the fust
place they 'd look."

A few logs were stranded on the stony point of the island.  We
withed three others to mine, setting sail with two bits of
driftwood for paddles.  We pulled for the south shore, but the
current carried us rapidly down-river.  In a bay some two miles
below we found, to our joy, the two sections of the big raft
undergoing repairs.  At daybreak D'ri put off in the woods for home.

"Don't like the idee o' goin' int' the British navy," said he.  "'D
ruther chop wood 'n' ketch bears over 'n St. Lawrence County.
Good-by, Ray!  Tek care o' yerself."

Those were the last words he said to me, and soon I was on the raft
again, floating toward the great city of my dreams.  I had a mighty
fear the schooner would overhaul us, but saw nothing more of her.
I got new clothes in Montreal, presenting myself in good repair.
They gave me hearty welcome, those good friends of my mother, and I
spent a full year in the college, although, to be frank, I was near
being sent home more than once for fighting and other deviltry.

It was midsummer when I came back again.  I travelled up the river
road, past our island refuge of that dark night; past the sweeping,
low-voiced currents that bore me up; past the scene of our wreck in
the whirlwind; past the great gap in the woods, to stand open God
knows how long.  I was glad to turn my face to the south shore, for
in Canada there was now a cold welcome for most Yankees, and my
fists were sore with resenting the bitter taunt.  I crossed in a
boat from Iroquois, and D'ri had been waiting for me half a day at
the landing.  I was never so glad to see a man--never but once.
Walking home I saw corn growing where the forest had been--acres of
it.

"D'ri," said I, in amazement, "how did you ever do it?  There 's
ten years' work here."

"God helped us," said he, soberly.   "The trees went over 'n the
windfall,--slammed 'em down luk tenpins fer a mild er more,--an' we
jes' burnt up the rubbish."




IV

April was near its end.  The hills were turning green, albeit we
could see, here and there on the high ledge above us, little
patches of snow--the fading footprints of winter.  Day and night we
could hear the wings of the wild fowl roaring in the upper air as
they flew northward.  Summer was coming,--the summer of 1812,--and
the war with the British.  The President had called for a hundred
thousand volunteers to go into training for battle.  He had also
proclaimed there would be no more whipping in the ranks.  Then my
father told me that, since I could have no peace at home, I should
be off to the war and done with it.

We were working near the road that day Thurst Miles came galloping
out of the woods, waving his cap at us.  We ran to meet him--my
father and I and the children.  He pulled up a moment, his horse
lathered to the ears.

"Injuns!" he shouted.  "Git out o' here quick 'n' mek fer the
Corners!  Ye 'll be all massacreed ef ye don't."

Then he whacked the wet flank of his horse with a worn beech bough,
and off he went.

We ran to the house in a great panic.  I shall never forget the
crying of the children.  Indians had long been the favorite bugbear
of the border country.  Many a winter's evening we had sat in the
firelight, fear-faced, as my father told of the slaughter in Cherry
Valley; and, with the certainty of war, we all looked for the red
hordes of Canada to come, in paint and feathers.

"Ray," my father called to me, as he ran, "ketch the cow quick an'
bring 'er 'long."

I caught her by the horn and brought her to the door quickly.
Mother was throwing some clothes into a big bundle.  Father met me
with a feather bed in his arms.  He threw it over the back of the
cow and bound it on with a bed-cord.  That done, he gave me the
leading-rope to tie about her horns.  The hoofs of the flying horse
were hardly out of hearing when we were all in the road.  My mother
carried the baby, and my father his sword and rifle and one of the
little ones.  I took the three older children and set them on the
feather bed that was bound to the back of the cow.  They clung to
the bed-cord, their hair flying, as the old cow ran to keep up with
us, for at first we were all running.  In a moment we could hear
the voices of people coming behind.  One of the women was weeping
loudly as she ran.  At the first cross-road we saw Arv Law and his
family coming, in as great a hurry as we, Arv had a great pike-pole
in his hand.  Its upper end rose twenty feet above his head.

"What ye goin' t' dew with thet?" my father asked him.

"Goin' t' run it through the fust Injun I see," said he.  "I 've
broke the lock o' my gun."

There was a crowd at Jerusalem Four Corners when we got there.
Every moment some family was arriving in a panic--the men, like my
father, with guns and babies and baskets.  The women, with the
young, took refuge at once in the tavern, while the men surrounded
it.  Inside the line were youths, some oddly armed with slings or
clubs or cross-guns.  I had only the sword my father gave me and a
mighty longing to use it.  Arv Law rested an end of his pike-pole
and stood looking anxiously for "red devils" among the stumps of
the farther clearing.  An old flint-lock, on the shoulder of a man
beside him, had a barrel half as long as the pole.  David Church
was equipped with axe and gun, that stood at rest on either side of
him.

Evening came, and no sign of Indians.  While it was growing dusk I
borrowed a pail of the innkeeper and milked the cow, and brought
the pail, heaped with froth, to my mother, who passed brimming cups
of milk among the children.  As night fell, we boys, more daring
than our fathers, crept to the edge of the timber and set the big
brush-heaps afire, and scurried back with the fear of redmen at our
heels.  The men were now sitting in easy attitudes and had begun to
talk.

"Don't b'lieve there's no Injuns comin'," said Bill Foster.  "Ef
they wus they 'd come."

"'Cordin' t' my observation," said Arv Law, looking up at the sky,
"Injuns mos' gen'ally comes when they git ready."

"An' 't ain't when yer ready t' hev 'em, nuther," said Lon
Butterfield.

"B'lieve they come up 'n' peeked out o' the bushes 'n' see Arv with
thet air pike-pole, 'n' med up their minds they hed n't better run
up ag'in' it," said Bill Foster.  "Scairt 'em--thet's whut's th'
matter."

"Man 'et meks light o' this pole oughter hev t' carry it," said
Arv, as he sat impassively resting it upon his knee.

"One things sure," said Foster; "ef Arv sh'u'd cuff an Injun with
thet air he 'll squ'sh 'im."

"Squ'sh 'im!" said Arv, with a look of disgust.  "'T ain't med t'
squ'sh with, I cal'late t' p'int it at 'em 'n' jab."

And so, as the evening wore away and sleep hushed the timid, a
better feeling came over us.  I sat by Rose Merriman on the steps,
and we had no thought of Indians.  I was looking into her big hazel
eyes, shining in the firelight, and thinking how beautiful she was.
And she, too, was looking into my eyes, while we whispered
together, and the sly minx read my thoughts, I know, by the look of
her.

Great flames were now leaping high as the timber-tops at the edge
of the clearing.  A dead spruce caught fire as we were looking.
The flames threw over it a lacy, shimmering, crackling net of gold.
Then suddenly it burst into a red, leaping tower.  A few moments,
and the cavern of the woods, along the timber side, was choked with
fire.  The little hamlet had become a spring of light in the
darkness.  We could see the stumps and houses far afield, as if it
had been noonday.  Suddenly we all jumped to our feet.  A wild yell
came echoing through the woods.

"There they be!" said Asher Eastman, as he cocked his gun.  "I tol'
ye so."

As a matter of fact, he had told us nothing of the kind.  He was
the one man who had said nothing.

Arv Law stood erect, his pike-pole poised in both hands, and we
were all ready for action.  We could hear the rattle of many hoofs
on the road.  As soon as the column showed in the firelight, Bill
Foster up with his musket and pulled the trigger.  I could hear the
shot scatter on stump and stone.  Every man had his gun to his eye.

"Wait till they come nearer," said Asher Eastman.

The Indians had halted.  Far behind them we could hear the wild
hallooing of many voices.  In a moment we could see those on
horseback go galloping off in the direction whence they had come.
Back in the house a number of the women were praying.  My mother
came out, her face whiter than I had ever seen it before, and
walked to my father, and kissed him without ever saying a word.
Then she went back into the house.

"Scairt?" I inquired, turning to Rose, who now stood beside me.

"I should think I was," she whispered.  "I 'm all of a tremble."

"If anything happens, I 'd like something to remember you by."

"What?" she whispered.

I looked at her beautiful red lips.  She had never let me kiss them.

"A kiss, if nothing more," I answered.

She gave me a kiss then that told me something of what was in her
heart, and went away into the house.

"Goin' t' surround us," said Arv Law--"thet 's whut 's th' matter."

"Mus' be ready t' rassle 'em any minute," said Asher Eastman, as he
sidled over to a little group.

A young man came out of the house and took his place in line with a
big squirt-gun and a pail of steaming-hot water.

The night wore on; our fires burned low.  As the approaching day
began to light the clearing, we heard a sound that brought us all
to our feet.  A burst of bugle notes went chasing over the
timber-land to the tune of "Yankee Doodle."  We looked at one
another in surprise.  Then there came a thunder of hoofs in the
distance, the ragged outline of a troop of cavalry.

"Soldiers!" said Arv, as he raised his pike.

"The British?" somebody asked.

"Dunno," said he.  "Ain' no Injuns, I don't b'lieve."

A troop of cavalry was approaching at a gallop.  They pulled up a
few rods away and jammed into a big crescent of rearing, trampling
horses.  We could see they were American soldiers.  We all lowered
our guns.

"Who are you?" one of them shouted.

"Citizens," my father answered.

"Why are you armed?"

"To fight Injuns."

A chorus of laughter came from the cavalry.

They loosed rein, letting their horses advance.

"My dear man," said one of them, a big shako on his head, "there
ain't an Indian 'tween here an' St. Regis.  We thought you were
British, an' it's lucky we did n't charge in the dark; we 'd have
cut you all to pieces before we knew who you were,"

A body of infantry was marching down the pike.  They were the
volunteers of Captain Darius Hawkins, on their way to Ogdensburg,
with an escort of cavalry from Sackett's Harbor.  The scare was
over.  Women came out, laughing and chattering.  In a few moments
they were all in the road, going home--men, women, and children.

I enlisted with Captain Hawkins, and hurried to the house, and
packed my things, and bade them all good-by.




V

I followed the camp and took my place in the ranks at Ogdensburg.
We went immediately into barracks--a structure long and low and
weather-stained, overlooking the St. Lawrence.  There was a fine
level field in front of it, and a flag waving at the top of a high
staff.  The men cheered lustily that afternoon as they passed it,
where stood General Jacob Brown, his cocked hat in his hand--a
splendid figure of a man, My delight in the life of a soldier began
that hour, and has never left me.

There was a lot of horse-play that night, in which some of the
green boys were roughly handled.  They told me, I remember, that
all new recruits had to fight a duel; but when they gave me the
choice of weapons I was well content.  I had the sure eye of my
father, and the last time I had fenced with him, there at home, he
said my arm was stronger and quicker than his had ever been.
Indeed, I was no sooner tall enough to swing a sword than he began
teaching me how to use it.  In the wood back of the barracks that
night, they learned I was not a man to be fooled with.  The tall
sergeant who stood before me saw his sword go flying in the gloom
the second thrust he made at me, and ran for his life, amid roars
of laughter.  I had no lack of friends after that day.

It was a year of surprises in the Northern army, and D'ri was the
greatest of all.  That long, wiry, sober-faced Yankee conquered the
smartness of the new camp in one decisive and immortal victory.  At
first they were disposed to poke fun at him.

"Looks a little tired," said the sergeant of the guard.

"Needs rest--that's what's matter o' him," said the captain.

"Orter be turned out t' grass a leetle while," the adjutant
suggested.

The compliments he failed to hear soon came to him indirectly, and
he had much to put up with.  He kept his temper and smoked
thoughtfully, and took it ail in good part.  The night after he
came they put him on guard duty--a greenhorn, with no knowledge of
any orders but gee and haw.  They told him he should allow nobody
to pass him while on duty, but omitted to mention the countersign.
They instructed him in the serious nature of his task, adding that
his failure to comply with orders would incur the penalty of death.
D'ri looked very sober as he listened.  No man ever felt a keener
sense of responsibility.  They intended, I think, to cross the
lines and take his gun away and have fun with him, but the
countersign would have interfered with their plans.

D'ri went to his post a little after sundown.  The guard was
posted.  The sergeant, with his party of six, started back to the
guard-house, but they never got there.  They went as far as D'ri.
He stood with his gun raised.

"Come another step," said he, "an' I'll let the moonlight through
ye."

They knew he meant it, and they stood still.

"Come for'ard--one et a time," said D'ri, "Drop yer guns 'n' set
down.  Ye look tired."

They did as he commanded, for they could see he meant business, and
they knew he had the right to kill.

Another man came along shortly.

"Halt!  Who comes there?" D'ri demanded,

"Friend with the countersign," he replied.

"Can't fool me," said D'ri.  "Come up here 'n' set down 'n' mek
yerself t' hum.  Drop yer gun fust.  Drop it, er I 'll drop you."

He dropped his gun promptly and accepted the invitation to sit
down.  This last man had some arguments to offer, but D'ri stood
sternly and made no reply.

At eleven o'clock Captain Hawkins sent out inquiries for the
sergeant of the guard and his relief.  He could find nobody who had
seen them since dark.  A corporal was also missing.  The captain
sent a man to look for them.  He got as far as D'ri and sat down.
They waited for him in vain.  The captain stood looking into the
darkness and wondering about his men.  He conferred with Adjutant
Church.  Then he set out with two men to go the rounds.  They got
as far as D'ri.

"Halt!  Who comes there?" he demanded.

"Grand rounds," was the answer of the captain.

"Lay down yer arms," said D'ri, "an" come up here 'n' set down."

"Haven't time," said the captain, failing at first to grasp the
situation.

"You tek time, er I 'll put a hole 'n yer jacket," said D'ri.

One of the privates turned quickly and ran.  D'ri sent a shot after
him, that only grazed a leg, and he kept on.  Then D'ri gave all
attention to his new prisoners.  They could see no amusement in
dodging bullets; they threw their arms on the side-hill and sat
down with the others.

The captain swore as he submitted,

"Don't rile yerself," said D'ri; "you need rest."

"No, I don't, nuther," said the captain.

"Ye'll hev t' hev it, anyway," said D'ri.

"This beats h--!" the captain answered, with a laugh.

A feeling of alarm began to spread.  The adjutant was standing in a
group of men at headquarters soon after midnight.  They were ears
under in the mystery.  The escaped soldier came running toward them
out of the dark.  He was breathing heavily; his leg was bleeding
and sore.

"Wall, what is it?" the adjutant demanded.

"D'ri!" the man gasped, and dropped down exhausted.

"D'ri?" the officer inquired.

"D'ri!" the man repeated.  "It's thet air man they call D'ri.  He's
roped in everybody thet come his way.  They 're all settin' on the
hill up there beside him.  Won't let a man move when he gits him."

The adjutant snickered as he spat an oath.  He was made of iron,
that man Church.

"Post a guard around him," said he, turning to an officer.  "The
dem fool 'd tek the hull garrison ef we did n't.  I 'll go 'n' try
t' pull him off his perch."

"He 'll lay ye up," said the returned private, baring his bloody
leg.  "Eff ye try t' fool with him ye'll limp.  See what he done t'
me."

The adjutant swore again.

"Go t' the hospital," he commanded.

Then he strode away, but he did not return that night.

The moon was shining as the adjutant came, in sight and hailed the
group of prisoners.

"What ye settin' there fer?" he shouted.

"You 'll know 'n a minute," said one of them.

"Halt!  Who comes there?" D'ri demanded.

"Friend with--"

"Don't ye purten' t' be my friend," D'ri answered.  "'T won't work.
Come up here 'n' set down."

"Stop foolin', man," said the adjutant.

"I ain't a-foolin'."

"He ain't a-foolin'; he means business," said one of the prisoners.

"Don't ye tamper with me.  I 'll teach you--" the adjutant
threatened.

"Ain't a-goin' t' tamper with ye a minute," said D'ri.  "If ye
don't set down here quick, I 'll put a hole in ye."

"Lunatic! wha' d' ye mean?"

"I mean t' turn ye out t' grass a leetle while," D'ri answered
soberly.  "Ye look tired."

The officer made at him, but in a flash D'ri had knocked him down
with his musket.  The adjutant rose and, with an oath, joined the
others.

"Dunno but he 'll tek the hull garrison 'fore sunrise," he
muttered.  "Let 'em come--might es well hev comp'ny."

A little before daylight a man sick in the hospital explained the
situation.  He had given D'ri his orders.  They brought him out on
a stretcher.  The orders were rescinded, the prisoners released.

Captain Hawkins, hot to his toes with anger, took D'ri to
headquarters.  General Brown laughed heartily when he heard the
facts, and told D'ri he was made of the right stuff.

"These greenhorns are not nice to play with," he said.  "They're
like some guns--loaded when you don't expect it.  We 've had enough
skylarking."

And when the sick man came out of hospital he went to the
guard-house.

After we had shown our mettle the general always had a good word
for D'ri and me, and he put us to the front in every difficult
enterprise.




VI

We had been four months in Ogdensburg, waiting vainly for some
provocation to fight.  Our own drilling was the only sign of war we
could see on either side of the river.  At first many moved out of
the village, but the mill was kept running, and after a little they
began to come back.  The farms on each side of the river looked as
peaceful as they had ever looked.  The command had grown rapidly.
Thurst Miles of my own neighborhood had come to enlist shortly
after D'ri and I enlisted, and was now in my company.

In September, General Brown was ordered to the Western frontier,
and Captain Forsyth came to command us.  Early in the morning of
October 2, a man came galloping up the shore with a warning, saying
that the river was black with boats a little way down.  Some of us
climbed to the barracks roof, from which we could see and count
them.  There were forty, with two gunboats.  Cannonading began
before the town was fairly awake.  First a big ball went over the
house-tops, hitting a cupola on a church roof and sending bell and
timbers with a crash into somebody's dooryard.  Then all over the
village hens began to cackle and children to wail.  People came
running out of doors half dressed.  A woman, gathering chips in her
dooryard, dropped them, lifted her dress above her head, and ran
for the house.  Unable to see her way, she went around in a wide
circle for a minute or two, while the soldiers were laughing.
Another ball hit a big water-tank on top of the lead-works.   It
hurled broken staves and a big slop of water upon the housetops,
and rolled a great iron hoop over roofs into the street below,
where it rolled on, chasing a group of men, who ran for their lives
before it.  The attack was an odd sort of comedy all through, for
nobody was hurt, and all were frightened save those of us who were
amused.  Our cannon gave quick reply, and soon the British stopped
firing and drew near.  We knew that they would try to force a
landing, and were ready for them.  We drove them back, when they
put off, and that was the end of it.

Next came the fight on the ice in February--a thing not highly
creditable to us, albeit we were then but a handful and they were
many.  But D'ri and I had no cause for shame of our part in it.  We
wallowed to our waists in the snow, and it was red enough in front
of us.  But the others gave way there on the edge of the river, and
we had to follow.  We knew when it was time to run; we were never
in the rear rank even then.  We made off with the others, although
a sabre's point had raked me in the temple, and the blood had
frozen on me, and I was a sight to scare a trooper.  Everybody ran
that day, and the British took the village, holding it only
twenty-four hours.  For our part in it D'ri got the rank of
corporal and I was raised from lieutenant to captain.  We made our
way to Sackett's Harbor, where I went into hospital for a month.

Then came a galling time of idleness.  In June we went with General
Brown--D'ri and I and Thurst Miles and Seth Alexander and half a
dozen others--down the river to the scene of our first fighting at
Ogdensburg, camping well back in the woods.  It was the evening of
the 27th of June that the general sent for me.  He was at the
mansion of Mr. Parish, where he had been dining.  He was sitting in
his dress-suit.  His dark side-whiskers and hair were brushed
carefully forward.  His handsome face turned toward me with a
kindly look.

"Bell," said he, "I wish to send you on very important business.
You have all the qualities of a good scout.  You know the woods.
You have courage and skill and tact.  I wish you to start
immediately, go along the river to Morristown, then cut over into
the Black River country and deliver this letter to the Comte de
Chaumont, at the Chateau Le Ray, in Leraysville.  If you see any
signs of the enemy, send a report to me at once.  I shall be here
three days.  Take Alexander, Olin, and Miles with you; they are all
good men.  When your letter is delivered, report at the Harbor as
soon as possible."

I was on the road with my party in half an hour.  We were all good
horsemen.  D'ri knew the shortest way out of the woods in any part
of the north country.  Thurst had travelled the forest from Albany
to Sackett's Harbor, and was the best hunter that ever trod a trail
in my time.  The night was dark, but we rode at a gallop until we
had left the town far behind us.  We were at Morristown before
midnight, pounding on the door of the Red Tavern.  The landlord
stuck his head out of an upper window, peering down at us by the
light of a candle.

"Everything quiet?" I asked.

"Everything quiet," said he.  "Crossed the river yesterday.  Folks
go back 'n' forth 'bout the same as ever.  Wife's in Elizabethtown
now, visiting."

We asked about the west roads and went on our way.  Long before
daylight we were climbing the steep road at Rossie to the inn of
the Travellers' Rest--a tavern famous in its time, that stood half
up the hill, with a store, a smithy, and a few houses grouped about
it, We came up at a silent walk on a road cushioned with sawdust.
D'ri rapped on the door until I thought he had roused the whole
village.  At last a man came to the upper window.   He, too,
inspected us with a candle.  Then he opened the door and gave us a
hearty welcome.  We put up our horses for a bite, and came into the
bar.

"Anything new?" I inquired.

"They say the British are camped this side of the river, north of
us," said he, "with a big tribe of Injuns.  Some of their cavalry
came within three miles of us to-day.  Everybody scairt t' death."

He began to set out a row of glasses.

"What 'll ye hev?" he inquired.

"Guess I 'll tip a little blue ruin int' me," said D'ri, with a
shiver; "'s a col' night."

Seth and I called for the same.

"An' you?" said the landlord, turning to Thurst.

"Wal," said the latter, as he stroked his thin beard, "when I tuk
the pledge I swore et I hoped t' drop dead 'fore I see myself tek
another drink.  I 'm jest goin' t' shet my eyes 'n' hold out my
glass.  I don' care what ye gi' me s' long es it's somethin'
powerful."

We ate crackers and cheese while the landlord was telling of the
west roads and the probable location of the British.  He stopped
suddenly, peered over my shoulder, and blew out the candle.  We
could hear a horse neighing in the yard.

"Some one et the window," he whispered.  Then he ran to the door
and drew the bolt.  "Ain' much idee who 't is," he added, peering
out of the window.  "By gosh! more 'n a dozen folks out here,
soldiers tew, most uv 'em on horseback.  Come quick."

We followed him upstairs, in the dark, as they began to pound the
door.  From the yard a light flashed up.  They were evidently
building a fire so that they would have better shooting if we came
out.

"May set the house afire," said the landlord.

He quickly unwound a big hose that ran up to a tank in the peak
above us.

"Plenty o' water?" D'ri whispered.

"Rivers uv it," said the landlord.  "Tank's connected with the
reservoir o' the lead-works on the hill up there.  Big wooden pipe
comes in the gable-end."

"Turn 'er on," said D'ri, quickly, "an' let me hev thet air hose."

The landlord ran up a ladder.   D'ri stuck the hose out of the
window.  The stream shot away with a loud hiss.  I stood by and saw
the jet of water leap forth as big as a pikestaff.  A man went off
his horse, sprawling as if he had been hit with a club.  The jet
leaped quickly from one to another, roaring on man and beast.
There was a mighty scurry.  Horses went headlong down the hill,
some dragging their riders.  In the silence of the night, bedlam
had broken loose.  The shouting men, the plunging horses, the
stream of water roaring on rock and road, woke the village.  Men
came running from behind the house to see what had happened, then
rushed after their horses.  Some fell cursing as the water hit
them.  The landlord put his mouth to my ear.

"Mek fer yer hosses," he hissed.

We were below-stairs and out of the door in a jiffy.  Two men fled
before us at the stable, scrambled over the fence, and went
tumbling downhill.  We bridled our horses with all speed, leaped
upon them, and went rushing down the steep road, our swords in
hand, like an avalanche.  They tried to stop us at the foot of the
hill, but fell away as we came near.  I could hear the snap of
their triggers in passing.  Only one pistol-shot came after us, and
that went high.

"Guess their ammunition 's a leetle wet," said D'ri, with a shout
that turned into laughter as we left the British behind us.

A party of four or five mounted and gave chase; but our powder was
a bit drier than theirs, and for a time we raked the road with our
bullets.  What befell them I know not, I only know that they held
up and fell out of hearing.

Crossing a small river at daylight, we took the bed of it, making
our way slowly for half a mile or so into the woods.  There we
built a fire, and gave the horses half the feed in our saddle-bags,
and ate our mess on a flat rock.

"Never hed no sech joemightyful time es thet afore," said D'ri, as
he sat down, laughing, and shook his head.  "Jerushy Jane!  Did n't
we come down thet air hill!  Luk slidin' on a greased pole."

"Comin' so luk the devil they did n't dast git 'n er way," said
Thurst.

"We wus all rippin' th' air 'ith them air joemightyful big sabres,
tew," D'ri went on.  "Hed a purty middlin' sharp edge on us.  Stuck
out luk a haystack right 'n' left."

He began bringing wood as he sang the chorus of his favorite
ballad:--

  Li toorul I oorul I oorul I ay, etc.

Thurst knew a trail that crossed the river near by and met the
Caraway Pike a few miles beyond.  Having eaten, I wrote a despatch
to be taken back by Thurst as soon as we reached the pike.  Past
ten o'clock we turned into a rough road, where the three of us went
one way and Thurst another.

I rode slowly, for the horses were nearly fagged.  I gave them an
hour's rest when we put up for dinner.  Then we pushed on, coming
in sight of the Chateau Le Ray at sundown.  A splendid place it
was, the castle of gray stone fronting a fair stretch of wooded
lawn, cut by a brook that went splashing over rocks near by, and
sent its velvet voice through wood and field.  A road of fine
gravel led through groves of beech and oak and pine to a grassy
terrace under the castle walls.  A servant in livery came to meet
us at the door, and went to call his master.  Presently a tall,
handsome man, with black eyes and iron-gray hair and mustache, came
down a path, clapping his hands.

"Welcome, gentlemen!  It is the Captain Bell?" said he, with a
marked accent, as he came to me, his hand extended.  "You come from
Monsieur the General Brown, do you not?"

"I do," said I, handing him my message.

He broke the seal and read it carefully.

"I am glad to see you--ver' glad to see you!" said he, laying his
hands upon my shoulders and giving me a little shake.

Two servants went away with D'ri and Seth and the horses.

"Come, captain," said my host, as he led the way.  "You are in good
time for dinner."

We entered a great triangular hall, lighted by wide windows above
the door, and candelabra of shining brass that hung from its high
ceiling.  There were sliding doors of polished wood on each side of
it.  A great stairway filled the point of the triangle.  I was
shown to my room, which was as big as a ball-room, it seemed to me,
and grandly furnished; no castle of my dreams had been quite so
fine.  The valet of the count looked after me, with offers of new
linen and more things than I could see use for.  He could not speak
English, I remember, and I addressed him in the good French my
mother had taught me.

The kind of life I saw in this grand home was not wholly new to me,
for both my mother and father had known good living in their youth,
and I had heard much of it.  I should have been glad of a new
uniform; but after I had had my bath and put on the new shirt and
collar the valet had brought me, I stood before the long pier-glass
and saw no poor figure of a man.

The great dining-hall of the count was lighted with many candles
when we came in to dinner.  It had a big fireplace, where logs were
blazing, for the night had turned cool, and a long table with a big
epergne of wrought silver, filled with roses, in its centre.  A
great silken rug lay under the table, on a polished floor, and the
walls were hung with tapestry.  I sat beside the count, and
opposite me was the daughter of the Sieur Louis Francois de
Saint-Michel, king's forester under Louis XVI.  Therese, the
handsome daughter of the count, sat facing him at the farther end
of the table, and beside her was the young Marquis de Gonvello.  M.
Pidgeon, the celebrated French astronomer, Moss Kent, brother of
the since famous chancellor, the Sieur Michel, and the Baroness de
Ferre, with her two wards, the Misses Louise and Louison de
Lambert, were also at dinner.  These young ladies were the most
remarkable of the company; their beauty was so brilliant, so
fascinating, it kindled a great fire in me the moment I saw it.
They said little, but seemed to have much interest in all the talk
of the table.  I looked at them more than was polite, I am sure,
but they looked at me quite as often.  They had big, beautiful
brown eyes, and dark hair fastened high with jewelled pins, and
profiles like those of the fair ladies of Sir Peter Lely, so finely
were they cut.  One had a form a bit fuller and stronger than the
other's, but they were both as tall and trim as a young beech, with
lips cherry-red and cheeks where one could see faintly the glow of
their young blood.  Their gowns were cut low, showing the graceful
lines of neck and shoulder and full bosom.  I had seen pretty
girls, many of them, but few high-bred, beautiful young women.
The moment I saw these two some new and mighty force came into me.
There were wine and wit a-plenty at the count's table, and other
things that were also new to me, and for which I retained perhaps
too great a fondness.

The count asked me to tell of our journey, and I told the story
with all the spirit I could put into my words.  I am happy to say
it did seem to hit the mark, for I was no sooner done with our
adventure than the ladies began to clap their hands, and the Misses
de Lambert had much delight in their faces when the baroness retold
my story in French.

Dinner over, the count invited me to the smoking-room, where, in a
corner by ourselves, I had some talk with him.  He told me of his
father--that he had been a friend of Franklin, that he had given a
ship and a cargo of gunpowder to our navy in '76.  Like others I
had met under his roof, the count had seen the coming of the Reign
of Terror in France, and had fled with his great fortune.  He had
invested much of it there in the wild country.  He loved America,
and had given freely to equip the army for war.  He was, therefore,
a man of much influence in the campaign of the North, and no doubt
those in authority there were instructed, while the war was on, to
take special care of his property.

"And will you please tell me," I said at length, "who are the
Misses de Lambert?"

"Daughters of a friend in Paris," said the count.  "He is a great
physician.  He wishes not for them to marry until they are
twenty-one.  Mon Dieu! it was a matter of some difficulty.  They
were beautiful."

"Very beautiful!" I echoed.

"They were admired," he went on.  "The young men they began to make
trouble.  My friend he send them here, with the baroness, to
study--to finish their education.  It is healthy, it is quiet,
and--well, there are no young gentlemen.  They go to bed early;
they are up at daylight; they have the horse; they have boats; they
amuse themselves ver' much.  But they are impatient; they long for
Paris--the salon, the theatre, the opera.  They are like prisoners:
they cannot make themselves to be contented.  The baroness she has
her villa on a lake back in the woods, and, mon ame! it is
beautiful there--so still, so cool, so delightful!  At present they
have a great fear of the British.  They lie awake; they listen;
they expect to be carried off; they hear a sound in the night, and,
mon Dieu! it is the soldiers coming."

The count laughed, lifting his shoulders with a gesture of both
hands.  Then he puffed thoughtfully at his cigarette.

"Indeed," he went on presently, "I think the invasion is not far
away.  They tell me the woods in the north are alive with British
cavalry.  I am not able to tell how many, but, Dieu! it is enough.
The army should inform itself immediately.  I think it is better
that you penetrate to the river to-morrow, if you are not afraid,
to see what is between, and to return by the woods.  I shall
trouble you to take a letter to the General Brown.  It will be
ready at any hour."

"At six?" I inquired.

"At six, certainly, if you desire to start then," he replied.

He rose and took my arm affectionately and conducted me to the big
drawing-room.  Two of the ladies were singing as one played the
guitar.  I looked in vain for the Misses de Lambert.  The others
were all there, but they had gone.  I felt a singular depression at
their absence and went to my room shortly to get my rest, for I had
to be off early in the morning.  Before going to bed, however, I
sat down to think and do some writing.  But I could not for the
life of me put away the thought of the young ladies.  They looked
alike, and yet I felt sure they were very different.  Somehow I
could not recall in what particular they differed.  I sat a time
thinking over it.  Suddenly I heard low voices, those of women
speaking in French; I could not tell from where they came.

"I do wish she would die, the hateful thing!" said one.  (It must
be understood these words are more violent in English than they
seem in French.)

"The colonel is severe to-night," said another.

"The colonel--a fine baroness indeed--vieille tyran!  I cannot love
her.  Lord!  I once tried to love a monkey and had better luck.
The colonel keeps all the men to herself.  Whom have I seen for a
year?  Dieu! women, grandpapas, greasy guides!  Not a young man
since we left Paris."

"My dear Louison!" said the other, "there are many things better
than men."

"Au nom de Dieu!  But I should like to know what they are.  I have
never seen them."

"But often men are false and evil," said the other, in a sweet, low
voice.

"Nonsense!" said the first, impatiently.  "I had rather elope with
a one-legged hostler than always live in these woods."

"Louison!  You ought to cross yourself and repeat a Hail Mary."

"Thanks!  I have tried prayer.  It is n't what I need.  I am no nun
like you.  My dear sister, don't you ever long for the love of a
man--a big, handsome, hearty fellow who could take you up in his
arms and squeeze the life out of you?"

"Eh bien," said the other, with a sigh, "I suppose it is very nice.
I do not dare to think of it."

"Nice!  It is heaven, Louise!  And to see a man like that and not
be permitted to--to speak to him!  Think of it!  A young and
handsome man--the first I have seen for a year!  Honestly I could
poison the colonel."

"My dear, it is the count as much as the colonel.  She is under his
orders, and he has an eagle eye."

"The old monkey!  He enrages me!  I could rend him limb from limb!"

I could not help hearing what they said, but I did not think it
quite fair to share their confidence any further, so I went to one
of the windows and closed a shutter noisily.  The voices must have
come from a little balcony just under my room.

"My dear sister, you are very terrible," said one of them, and then
the shutter came to, and I heard no more.

A full moon lighted the darkness.  A little lake gleamed like
silver between the tree-tops.  Worn out with hard travel, I fell
into bed shortly, and lay a long time thinking of those young
ladies, of the past, of to-morrow and its perils, and of the
farther future.   A new life had begun for me.




VII

The sun was lifting above the tree-tops when the count's valet
called me that morning at the Chateau Le Ray.  Robins were calling
under my windows, and the groves rang with tournaments of happy
song.  Of that dinner-party only the count was at breakfast with
me.  We ate hurriedly, and when we had risen the horses were at the
door.  As to my own, a tall chestnut thoroughbred that Mr. Parish
had brought over from England, I never saw him in finer fettle.  I
started Seth by Caraway Pike for Ogdensburg with the count's
message.

Mine host laid hold of my elbow and gave it a good shake as I left
him, with D'ri, taking a trail that led north by west in the deep
woods.  They had stuffed our saddle-bags with a plenty for man and
horse.

I could not be done thinking of the young ladies.  It put my heart
in a flutter when I looked back at the castle from the wood's edge
and saw one of them waving her handkerchief in a window.  I lifted
my hat, and put my spurs to the flank with such a pang in me I
dared not look again.  Save for that one thing, I never felt
better.  The trail was smooth, and we galloped along in silence for
a mile or so.  Then it narrowed to a stony path, where one had
enough to do with slow going to take care of his head, there were
so many boughs in the way.

"Jerushy Jane!" exclaimed D'ri, as he slowed down.  "Thet air's a
gran' place.  Never hed my karkiss in no sech bed as they gin me
las' night--softer 'n wind, an' hed springs on like them new wagins
ye see over 'n Vermont.  Jerushy!  Dreamed I was flyin'."

I had been thinking of what to do if we met the enemy and were hard
pressed.  We discussed it freely, and made up our minds that if
there came any great peril of capture we would separate, each to
take his own way out of the difficulty.

We halted by a small brook at midday, feeding the horses and
ourselves out of the saddle-bags.

"Ain't jest eggzac'ly used t' this kind uv a sickle," said D'ri, as
he felt the edge of his sabre, "but I 'll be dummed ef it don't
seem es ef I 'd orter be ruther dang'rous with thet air 'n my hand."

He knew a little about rough fighting with a sabre.  He had seen my
father and me go at each other hammer and tongs there in our
door-yard every day of good weather.  Stormy days he had always
stood by in the kitchen, roaring with laughter, as the good steel
rang and the house trembled.  He had been slow to come to it, but
had had his try with us, and had learned to take an attack without
flinching.  I went at him hard for a final lesson that day in the
woods--a great folly, I was soon to know.  We got warm and made
more noise than I had any thought of.  My horse took alarm and
pulled away, running into a thicket.  I turned to catch him.

"Judas Priest!" said D'ri.

There, within ten feet of us, I saw what made me, ever after, a
more prudent man.  It was an English officer leaning on his sword,
a tall and handsome fellow of some forty years, in shiny top-hoots
and scarlet blouse and gauntlets of brown kid.

"You are quite clever," said he, touching his gray mustache.

I made no answer, but stood pulling myself together.

"You will learn," he added, smiling, with a tone of encouragement.
"Let me show you a trick."

He was most polite in his manner, like a play-hero, and came toward
me as he spoke.  Then I saw four other Britishers coming out to
close in upon us from behind trees.

He came at me quickly, and I met him.  He seemed to think it would
be no trick to unhand my weapon.  Like a flash, with a whip of his
sabre, he tried to wrench it away.  D'ri had begun to shoot,
dodging between trees, and a redcoat had tumbled over.  I bore in
upon my man, but he came back at me with surprising vigor.  On my
word, he was the quickest swordsman I ever had the honor of facing.

But he had a mean way of saying "Ha!" as he turned my point.  He
soon angered me, whereupon I lost a bit of caution, with some
blood, for he was at me like a flash, and grazed me on the hip
before I could get my head again.  It was no parlor play, I can
tell you.  We were fighting for life, and both knew it.  We fought
up and down through brakes and bushes and over stones--a perilous
footing.  I could feel his hand weakening.  I put all my speed to
the steel then, knowing well that, barring accident, I should win.
I could hear somebody coming up behind me.

"Keep away there," my adversary shouted, with a fairness I admire
when I think of it.  "I can handle him.  Get the other fellow."

I went at him to make an end of it.

"I'll make you squint, you young cub," he hissed, lunging at me.

He ripped my blouse at the shoulder, and, gods of war! we made the
sparks fly.  Then he went down, wriggling; I had caught him in the
side, poor fellow!  Like a flash I was off in a thicket.  One of
the enemy got out of my way and sent a bullet after me.  I could
feel it rip and sting in the muscle as it rubbed my ribs.  I kept
foot and made for my horse.  He had caught his reins, and I was on
him and off in the bush, between bullets that came ripping the
leaves about me, before they could give chase.

Drums were beating the call to arms somewhere.  I struck the trail
in a minute, and, leaning low in the saddle, went bounding over
logs and rocks and down a steep hillside as if the devil were after
me.  I looked back, and was nearly raked off by a bough.  I could
hear horses coming in the trail behind with quick and heavy jumps.
But I was up to rough riding and had little fear they would get a
sight of me.  However, crossing a long stretch of burnt timber,
they must have seen me.  I heard a crack of pistols far behind; a
whiz of bullets over my head.  I shook out the reins and let the
horse go, urging with cluck and spur, never slacking for rock or
hill or swale.  It was a wilder ride than any I have known since or
shall again, I can promise you, for, God knows, I have been hurt
too often.  Fast riding over a new trail is leaping in the dark and
worse than treason to one's self.  Add to it a saddle wet with your
own blood, then you have something to give you a turn of the
stomach thinking of it.

When I was near tumbling with a kind of rib-ache and could hear no
pursuer, I pulled up.  There was silence about me, save the sound
of a light breeze in the tree-tops.  I rolled off my horse, and
hooked my elbow in the reins, and lay on my belly, grunting with
pain.  I felt better, having got my breath, and a rod of beech to
bite upon--a good thing if one has been badly stung and has a
journey to make.  In five minutes I was up and off at a slow jog,
for I knew I was near safety.

I thought much of poor D'ri and how he might be faring.  The last I
had seen of him, he was making good use of pistol and legs, running
from tree to tree.  He was a dead shot, little given to wasting
lead.  The drums were what worried me, for they indicated a big
camp, and unless he got to the stirrups in short order, he must
have been taken by overwhelming odds.  It was near sundown when I
came to a brook and falls I could not remember passing.  I looked
about me.  Somewhere I had gone off the old trail--everything was
new to me.  It widened, as I rode on, up a steep hill.  Where the
tree-tops opened, the hill was covered with mossy turf, and there
were fragrant ferns on each side of me.  The ground was clear of
brush and dead timber.  Suddenly I heard a voice singing--a sweet
girl voice that thrilled me, I do not know why, save that I always
longed for the touch of a woman if badly hurt.  But then I have
felt that way having the pain of neither lead nor steel.  The voice
rang in the silent woods, but I could see no one nor any sign of
human habitation.  Shortly I came out upon a smooth roadway
carpeted with sawdust.  It led through a grove, and following it, I
came suddenly upon a big green mansion among the trees, with Doric
pillars and a great portico where hammocks hung with soft cushions
in them, and easy-chairs of old mahogany stood empty.  I have said
as little as possible of my aching wound: I have always thought it
bad enough for one to suffer his own pain.  But I must say I was
never so tried to keep my head above me as when I came to that
door.  Two figures in white came out to meet me.  At first I did
not observe--I had enough to do keeping my eyes open--that they
were the Mlles. de Lambert.

"God save us!" I heard one of them say.  "He is hurt; he is pale.
See the blood running off his boot-leg."

Then, as one took the bit, the other eased me down from my saddle,
calling loudly for help.  She took her handkerchief--that had a
perfume I have not yet forgotten--as she supported me, and wiped
the sweat and dust from my face.  Then I saw they were the splendid
young ladies I had seen at the count's table.  The discovery put
new life in me; it was like a dash of water in the face.  I lifted
my hat and bowed to them.

"Ladies, my thanks to you," I said in as good French as I knew.  "I
have been shot.  May I ask you to send for a doctor?"

A butler ran down the steps; a gardener and a stable-boy hurried
out of the grove.

"To the big room--the Louis-Quinze," said one of the girls,
excitedly, as the men came to my help.

The fat butler went puffing upstairs, and they followed, on each
side of me.

"Go for a doctor, quick," said one of them to the gardener, who was
coming behind--a Frenchman who prayed to a saint as he saw my blood.

They led me across a great green rug in a large hall above-stairs
to a chamber of which I saw little then save its size and the
wealth of its appointments.  The young ladies set me down, bidding
one to take off my boots, and sending another for hot water.  They
asked me where I was hurt.  Then they took off my blouse and
waistcoat.

"Mon Dieu!" said one to the other.  "What can we do?  Shall we cut
the shirt?"

"Certainly.  Cut the shirt," said the other.  "We must help him.
We cannot let him die."

"God forbid!" was the answer.  "See the blood.  Poor fellow!  It is
terrible!"

They spoke very tenderly as they cut my shirt with scissors, and
bared my back, and washed my wound with warm water.  I never felt a
touch so caressing as that of their light fingers, but, gods of
war! it did hurt me.  The bathing done, they bound me big with
bandages and left the room until the butler had helped me into bed.
They came soon with spirits and bathed my face and hands.  One
leaned over me, whispering, and asking what I would like to eat.
Directly a team of horses came prancing to the door.

"The colonel!" one of them whispered, listening.

"The colonel, upon my soul!" said the other, that sprightly
Louison, as she tiptoed to the window.  They used to call her
"Tiptoes" at the Hermitage.

The colonel!  I remembered she was none other than the Baroness de
Ferre; and thinking of her and of the grateful feeling of the
sheets of soft linen, I fell asleep.




VIII

The doctor came that night, and took out of my back a piece of
flattened lead.  It had gone under the flesh, quite half round my
body, next to the ribs, without doing worse than to rake the bone
here and there and weaken me with a loss of blood.  I woke awhile
before he came.  The baroness and the fat butler were sitting
beside me.  She was a big, stout woman of some forty years, with
dark hair and gray eyes, and teeth of remarkable whiteness and
symmetry.  That evening, I remember, she was in full dress.

"My poor boy!" said she, in English and in a sympathetic tone, as
she bent over me.

Indeed, my own mother could not have been kinder than that good
woman.  She was one that had a heart and a hand for the sick-room.
I told her how I had been hurt and of my ride.  She heard me
through with a glow in her eyes.

"What a story!" said she.  "What a daredevil!  I do not see how it
has been possible for you to live."

She spoke to me always in English of quaint wording and quainter
accent.  She seemed not to know that I could speak French.

An impressive French tutor--a fine old fellow, obsequious and
bald-headed--sat by me all night to give me medicine.  In the
morning I felt as if I had a new heart in me, and was planning to
mount my horse.  I thought I ought to go on about my business, but
I fear I thought more of the young ladies and the possibility of my
seeing them again.  The baroness came in after I had a bite to eat.
I told her I felt able to ride,

"You are not able, my child.  You cannot ride the horse now," said
she, feeling my brow; "maybe not for a ver' long time.  I have a
large house, plenty servant, plenty food.  Parbleu! be content.  We
shall take good care of you.  If there is one message to go to your
chief, you know I shall send it."

I wrote a brief report of my adventure with the British, locating
the scene as carefully as might be, and she sent it by mounted
messenger to "the Burg."

"The young ladies they wish to see you," said the baroness.  "They
are kind-hearted; they would like to do what they can.  But I tell
them no; they will make you to be very tired."

"On the contrary, it will rest me.  Let them come," I said.

"But I warn you," said she, lifting her finger as she left the
room, "do not fall in love.  They are full of mischief.  They do
not study.  They do not care.  You know they make much fun all day."

The young ladies came in presently.  They wore gray gowns admirably
fitted to their fine figures.  They brought big bouquets and set
them, with a handsome courtesy, on the table beside me.  They took
chairs and sat solemn-faced, without a word, as if it were a Quaker
meeting they had come to.  I never saw better models of sympathetic
propriety.  I was about to speak.  One of them shook her head, a
finger on her lips.

"Do not say one word," she said solemnly in English.  "It will make
you ver' sick."

It was the first effort of either of them to address me in English.
As I soon knew, the warning had exhausted her vocabulary.  The
baroness went below in a moment.   Then the one who had spoken came
over and sat near me, smiling.

"She does not know you can speak French," said she, whispering and
addressing me in her native tongue, as the other tiptoed to the
door.  "On your life, do not let her know.  She will never permit
us to see you.  She will keep us under lock and key.  She knows we
cannot speak English, so she thinks we cannot talk with you.  It is
a great lark.  Are you better?"

What was I to do under orders from such authority?  As they bade
me, I hope you will say, for that is what I did.  I had no easy
conscience about it, I must own.  Day after day I took my part in
the little comedy.  They came in Quaker-faced if the baroness were
at hand, never speaking, except to her, until she had gone.
Then--well, such animation, such wit, such bright eyes, such
brilliancy, I have never seen or heard.

My wound was healing.  War and stern duty were as things of the far
past.  The grand passion had hold of me.  I tried to fight it down,
to shake it off, but somehow it had the claws of a tiger.  There
was an odd thing about it all: I could not for the life of me tell
which of the two charming girls I loved the better.  It may seem
incredible; I could not understand it myself.  They looked alike,
and yet they were quite different.  Louison was a year older and of
stouter build.  She had more animation also, and always a quicker
and perhaps a brighter answer.  The other had a face more serious,
albeit no less beautiful, and a slower tongue.  She had little to
say, but her silence had much in it to admire, and, indeed, to
remember.  They appealed to different men in me with equal force, I
did not then know why.  A perplexing problem it was, and I had to
think and suffer much before I saw the end of it, and really came
to know what love is and what it is not.

[Illustration: "I could not for the life of me tell which of the
two charming girls I loved the better."]

Shortly I was near the end of this delightful season of illness.  I
had been out of bed a week.  The baroness had read to me every day,
and had been so kind that I felt a great shame for my part in our
deception.  Every afternoon she was off in a boat or in her
caleche, and had promised to take me with her as soon as I was able
to go.

"You know," said she, "I am going to make you to stay here a full
month.  I have the consent of the general."

I had begun to move about a little and enjoy the splendor of that
forest home.  There were, indeed, many rare and priceless things in
it that came out of her chateau in France.  She had some curious
old clocks, tokens of ancestral taste and friendship.  There was
one her grandfather had got from the land of Louis XIV.--_Le Grand
Monarque_, of whom my mother had begun to tell me as soon as I
could hear with understanding.  Another came from the bedchamber of
Philip II of Spain--a grand high clock that had tolled the hours in
that great hall beyond my door.  A little thing, in a case of
carved ivory, that ticked on a table near my bed, Moliere had given
to one of her ancestors, and there were many others of equal
interest.

Her walls were adorned with art treasures of the value of which I
had little appreciation those days.  But I remember there were
canvases of Correggio and Rembrandt and Sir Joshua Reynolds.  She
was, indeed, a woman of fine taste, who had brought her best to
America; for no one had a doubt, in the time of which I am writing,
that the settlement of the Compagnie de New York would grow into a
great colony, with towns and cities and fine roadways, and the full
complement of high living.  She had built the Hermitage,--that was
the name of the mansion,--fine and splendid as it was, for a mere
temporary shelter pending the arrival of those better days.

She had a curious fad, this hermit baroness of the big woods.  She
loved nature and was a naturalist of no poor attainments.  Wasps
and hornets were the special study of this remarkable woman.  There
were at least a score of their nests on her front portico--big and
little, and some of them oddly shaped.  She hunted them in wood and
field.  When she found a nest she had it moved carefully after
nightfall, under a bit of netting, and fastened somewhere about the
gables.  Around the Hermitage there were many withered boughs and
briers holding cones of wrought fibre, each a citadel of these
uniformed soldiers of the air and the poisoned arrow.  They were
assembled in colonies of yellow, white, blue, and black wasps, and
white-faced hornets.  She had no fear of them, and, indeed, no one
of the household was ever stung to my knowledge.  I have seen her
stand in front of her door and feed them out of a saucer.  There
were special favorites that would light upon her palm, overrunning
its pink hollow and gorging at the honey-drop.

"They will never sting," she would say, "if one does not declare
the war.  To strike, to make any quick motion, it gives them anger.
Then, mon cher ami! it is terrible.  They cause you to burn, to
ache, to make a great noise, and even to lie down upon the ground.
If people come to see me, if I get a new servant, I say: 'Make to
them no attention, and they will not harm you.'"

In the house I have seen her catch one by the wings on a window
and, holding it carefully ask me to watch her captive--sometimes a
a great daredevil hornet, lion-maned--as he lay stabbing with his
poison-dagger.

"Now," said she, "he is angry; he will remember.  If I release him
he will sting me when I come near him again.  So I do not permit
him to live--I kill him."

Then she would impale him and invite me to look at him with the
microscope.

One day the baroness went away to town with the young ladies.  I
was quite alone with the servants.  Father Joulin of the chateau
came over and sat awhile with me, and told me how he had escaped
the Parisian mob, a night in the Reign of Terror.  Late in the
afternoon I walked awhile in the grove with him.  When he left I
went slowly down the trail over which I had ridden.  My strength
was coming fast.  I felt like an idle man, shirking the saddle,
when I should be serving my country.  I must to my horse and make
an end to dallying.  With thoughts like these for company, I went
farther than I intended.  Returning over the bushy trail I came
suddenly upon--Louison! She was neatly gowned in pink and white.

"Le diable!" said she.  "You surprise me.  I thought you went
another way."

"Or you would not have taken this one," I said.

"Of course not," said she.  "One does not wish to find men if she
is hunting for--for--" she hesitated a moment, blushing--"mon Dieu!
for bears," she added.

I thought then, as her beautiful eyes looked up at me smiling, that
she was incomparable, that I loved her above all others--I felt
sure of it.

"And why do you hunt bears?" I inquired.

"I do not know.  I think it is because they are so--so beautiful,
so amiable!" she answered.

"And such good companions."

"Yes; they never embarrass you," she went on.  "You never feel at
loss for a word."

"I fear you do not know bears."

"Dieu! better than men.  Voila!" she exclaimed, touching me with
the end of her parasol.  "You are not so terrible.  I do not think
you would bite."

"No; I have never bitten anything but--but bread and doughnuts, or
something of that sort."

"Come, I desire to intimidate you.  Won't you please be afraid of
me?  Indeed, I can be very terrible.  See! I have sharp teeth."


She turned with a playful growl, and parting her crimson lips,
showed them to me--white and shapely, and as even as if they had
been wrought of ivory.  She knew they were beautiful, the vixen.

"You terrify me.  I have a mind to run," I said, backing off,

"Please do not run," she answered quickly.  "I should be afraid
that--that--"

She hesitated a moment, stirring the moss with one dainty foot.

"That you might not return," she added, smiling as she looked up at
me.

"Then--then perhaps it will do as well if I climb a tree."

"No, no; I wish to talk with you."

"Ma'm'selle, you honor me," I said.

"And dishonor myself, I presume, with so much boldness," she went
on.  "It is only that I have something to say; and you know when a
woman has something to--to say--"

"It is a fool that does not listen if she be as fair as you," I put
in.

"You are--well, I shall not say what I think of you, for fear--for
fear of giving offence," said she, blushing as she spoke.  "Do you
like the life of a soldier?"

"Very much, and especially when I am wounded, with such excellent
care and company."

"But your side--it was so horribly torn.  I did feel very
sorry--indeed I did.  You will go again to the war?"

"Unless--unless--Ah, yes, ma'm'selle, I shall go again to the war,"
I stammered, going to the brink of confession, only to back away
from it, as the blood came hot to my cheeks.

She broke a tiny bough and began stripping its leaves.

"Tell me, do you love the baroness?" she inquired as she whipped a
swaying bush of brier.

The question amazed me.  I laughed nervously.

"I respect, I admire the good woman--she would make an excellent
mother," was my answer.

"Well spoken!" she said, clapping her hands.  "I thought you were a
fool.  I did not know whether you were to blame or--or the Creator."

"Or the baroness," I added, laughing.

"Well," said she, with a pretty shrug, "is there not a man for
every woman?  The baroness she thinks she is irresistible.  She has
money.  She would like to buy you for a plaything--to marry you.
But I say beware.  She is more terrible than the keeper of the
Bastile.  And you--you are too young!"

"My dear girl," said I, in a voice of pleading, "it is terrible.
Save me!  Save me, I pray you!"

"Pooh!  I do not care!"--with a gesture of indifference, "I am
trying to save myself, that is all."

"From what?"

"Another relative.  Parbleu!  I have enough." She stamped her foot
impatiently as she spoke.  "I should be very terrible to you.  I
should say the meanest things.  I should call you grandpapa and
give you a new cane every Christmas."

"And if you gave me also a smile, I should be content."

More than once I was near declaring myself that day, but I had a
mighty fear she was playing with me, and held my tongue.  There was
an odd light in her eyes.  I knew not, then, what it meant.

"You are easily satisfied," was her answer.

"I am to leave soon," I said.  "May I not see you here to-morrow?"

"Alas! I do not think you can," was her answer.

"And why not?"

"Because it would not be proper," said she, smiling as she looked
up at me.

"Not proper!  I should like to know why."

"It would make me break another engagement," she went on, laughing.
"I am to go with the baroness to meet the count if he comes--she
has commanded.  The day after, in the morning, at ten o'clock, by
the cascade--will that do?  Good!  I must leave you now.  I must
not return with you.  Remember!" she commanded, pointing at me with
her tapered forefinger.  "Remember--ten o'clock in the morning."

Then she took a bypath and went out of sight.  I returned to the
mansion as deep in love as a man could be.  I went to dinner with
the rest that evening.  Louison came in after we were all seated.

"You are late, my dear," said the baroness.

"Yes; I went away walking and lost something, and was not able to
find it again."




IX

Next morning the baroness went away in her glittering caleche with
Louison.  Each shining spoke and golden turret flashed the sunlight
back at me as I looked after them at the edge of the wood.  The
baroness had asked me to go with her, but I thought the journey too
long.  Louise came out and sat by me awhile as I lay in the
hammock.  She was all in white.  A trifle taller and a bit more
slender than her sister, I have sometimes thought her beauty was
statelier, also, and more statuesque.  The sight of her seemed to
kindle in me the spirit of old chivalry.  I would have fought and
died for her with my best lance and plume.  In all my life I had
not seen a woman of sweeter graces of speech and manner, and, in
truth, I have met some of the best born of her sex.

She had callers presently--the Sieur Michel and his daughter.  I
went away, then, for a walk, and, after a time, strolled into the
north trail.  Crossing a mossy glade, in a circle of fragrant
cedar, I sat down to rest.  The sound of falling water came to my
ear through thickets of hazel and shadberry.  Suddenly I heard a
sweet voice singing a love-song of Provence--the same voice, the
same song, I had heard the day I came half fainting on my horse.
Somebody was coming near.  In a moment I saw Louise before me.

"What, ma'm'selle!" I said; "alone in the woods!"

"Not so," said she.  "I knew you were here--somewhere,
and--and--well, I thought you might be lonely."

"You are a good angel," I said, "always trying to make others
happy."

"Eh bien," said she, sitting beside me, "I was lonely myself.  I
cannot read or study.  I have neglected my lessons; I have insulted
the tutor--threw my book at him, and walked away, for he sputtered
at me.  I do not know what is the matter.  I know I am very wicked.
Perhaps--ah me! perhaps it is the devil."

"Ma'm'selle, it is appalling!" I said.  "You may have injured the
poor man.  You must be very bad.  Let me see your palm."

I held her dainty fingers in mine, that were still hard and brown,
peering into the pink hollow of her hand.  She looked up curiously.

"A quick temper and a heart of gold," I said.  "If the devil has
it, he is lucky, and--well, I should like to be in his confidence."

"Ah, m'sieur," said she, seriously, a little tremor on her lips, "I
have much trouble--you do not know.  I have to fight with myself."

"You have, then, a formidable enemy," I answered.

"But I am not quarrelsome," said she, thoughtfully.  "I am only
weary of the life here.  I should like to go away and be of some
use in the world.  I suppose it is wicked, for my papa wishes me to
stay.  And bah! it is a prison--a Hopital de Salpetriere!"

"Ma'm'selle," I exclaimed, "if you talk like that I shall take you
on my horse and fly with you.  I shall come as your knight, as your
deliverer, some day."

"Alas!" said she, with a sigh, "you would find me very heavy.  One
has nothing to do here but grow lazy and--ciel!--fat."

If my meeting with her sister had not made it impossible and
absurd, I should have offered my heart to this fair young lady then
and there.  Now I could not make it seem the part of honor and
decency.  I could not help adoring her simplicity, her frankness,
her beautiful form and face.

"It is no prison for me," I said.  "I do not long for deliverance.
I cannot tell you how happy I have been to stay--how unhappy I
shall be to leave."

"Captain," she said quickly, "you are not strong; you are no
soldier yet."

"Yes; I must be off to the wars."

"And that suggests an idea," said she, thoughtfully, her chin upon
her hand.

"Which is?"

"That my wealth is ill-fortune," she went on, with a sigh.  "Men
and women are fighting and toiling and bleeding and dying to make
the world better, and I--I am just a lady, fussing, primping,
peering into a looking-glass!  I should like to do something, but
they think I am too good--too holy."

"But it is a hard business--the labors and quarrels of the great
world," I suggested.

"Well--it is God's business," she continued.  "And am I not one of
his children, and 'wist ye not that I must be about my Father's
business?'  It was not too good for the man who said that."

"But what would you do?"

"I do not know.  I suppose I can do nothing because--alas! because
my father has bought my obedience with a million francs.  Do you
not see that I am in bondage?"

"Be patient; the life of a rich demoiselle is not barren of
opportunity."

"To be gay--oh! one might as well be a peacock; to say pretty
things, one might better be a well-trained parrot; to grace the
court or the salon, I had as soon be a statue in the corner--it has
more comfort, more security; to be admired, to hear fine
compliments--well, you know that is the part of a pet poodle.  I
say, captain, to be happy one must be free to do."

I looked into her big eyes, that were full of their new discovery.

"I should like to be among the wounded soldiers," said she, her
face brightening.  "It did make me very happy to sit by your
bedside and do for you."

There was a very tender look in her eyes then.

She started to rise.  A brier, stirring in the breeze, had fallen
across her hair.  She let me loose the thorns, and, doing so, I
kissed her forehead--I could not help it.

"M'sieur!" she exclaimed in a whisper.  Then she turned quickly
away and stood tearing a leaf in her fingers.

"Forgive me!" I pleaded, for I saw she was crying.  "It was the
impulse of a moment.  Pray forgive me!"

She stood motionless and made no answer, I never felt such a stir
in me, for I had a fear, a terrible fear, that I had lost what I
might never have again.

"It was honorable admiration," I continued, rising to my full
height beside her.  "Tell me, ma'm'selle, have I hurt you?"

"No," said she, in a voice that trembled.  "I am thinking--I am
thinking of somebody else."

The words, spoken so slowly, so sweetly, seemed, nevertheless, to
fly at me.  "Of somebody else!"  Whom could she mean?  Had her
sister told her?  Did she know of my meeting with Louison?  I was
about to confess how deeply, how tenderly, I loved her.  I had
spoken the first word when this thought flashed upon me, and I
halted.  I could not go on.

"Ma'm'selle," I said, "I--I--if it is I of whom you are thinking,
give me only your pity, and I can be content.  Sometime, perhaps, I
may deserve more.  If I can be of any service to you, send for
me--command me.  You shall see I am not ungrateful.  Ah,
ma'm'selle," I continued, as I stood to my full height, and felt a
mighty uplift in my heart that seemed to toss the words out of me,
"I have a strong arm and a good sword, and the love of honor and
fair women."

She wiped her eyes, and turned and looked up at me.  I was no
longer a sick soldier.

"It is like a beautiful story," she said thoughtfully; "and
you--you are like a knight of old.  We must go home.  It is long
past luncheon hour.  We must hurry."

She gave me her arm up the hill, and we walked without speaking.

"I am very well to-day," I remarked as we came to the road.  "If
you will wait here until I get to the big birch, I shall go around
to see if I can beat you to the door."

"It is not necessary," said she, smiling, "and--and, m'sieur, I am
not ashamed of you or of what I have done."

The baroness and Louison had not yet returned.  M. Pidgeon was at
luncheon with us in the big dining room, and had much to say of the
mighty Napoleon and the coalition he was then fighting.

The great monsieur stayed through the afternoon, as the baroness
had planned a big houseparty for the night, in celebration of the
count's return.  My best clothes had come by messenger from the
Harbor, and I could put myself in good fettle.  The baroness and
the count and Louison came early, and we sat long together under
the trees.

The dinner was at seven.  There were more than a dozen guests,
among whom were a number I had seen at the chateau--Mr. David
Parish of Ogdensburg, who arrived late in a big, two-wheeled cart
drawn by four horses that came galloping to the door, and General
Wilkinson, our new commander in the North, a stout, smooth-faced
man, who came with Mr. Parish in citizen's dress.

At dinner the count had much to say of scenes of excitement in
Albany, where he had lately been.  The baroness and her wards were
resplendent in old lace and sparkling jewels.  Great haunches of
venison were served from a long sideboard; there was a free flow of
old Madeira and Burgundy and champagne and cognac.  Mr. Parish and
the count and the general and Moss Kent and M. Pidgeon sat long at
the table, with cigars and coffee, after the rest of us had gone to
the parlors, and the big room rang with their laughter.  The young
Marquis de Gonvello and Mr. Marc Isambert Brunel of the Compagnie,
who, afterward founded the great machine-shops of the Royal Navy
Yard at Portsmouth and became engineer of the Thames tunnel, and
Pierre Chassinis, Jr., and I waltzed with the ladies.  Presently I
sat down near the baroness, who was talking in French with Therese
Le Ray, the count's daughter.

"Pardon my using French," said the baroness, turning to me, "for I
believe you do not use it, and, my friend, it is a misfortune, for
you miss knowing what good company is the Ma'm'selle Le Ray."

"And I miss much pleasure and mayhap a duel with the marquis," I
said, laughing; "but I beg you to proceed with your talk.  I have
learned many words since I came here, and I love the sound of it."

"We saw British soldiers to-day," she continued to Ma'm'selle Le
Ray, in French.  "They crossed the road near us on their horses."

Louison came over and sat by them.

"They were not in uniform," the baroness continued, "but I knew
they were English; you cannot mistake them."

"And what do you think ?" said Louison, eagerly.  "One of them
threatened to kiss me."

"Indeed, that was terrible," said Ma'm'selle Le Ray.  "You must
have been afraid."

"Yes," said she, smiling, "afraid he wouldn't.  They were a
good-looking lot."

"I do not think he was speaking of you at all," said the baroness.
"He was looking at me when--"

"Ciel!" exclaimed Louison, laughing.  "That is why they turned
suddenly and fled into the fields."

I fled, too,--perhaps as suddenly as the Britishers,--to save
myself the disgrace of laughter.

The great clock in the hall above-stairs tolled the hour of two.
The ladies had all gone to bed save the baroness.  The butler had
started upstairs, a candelabrum in his hand.  Following him were
the count and Mr. Parish, supporting the general between them.  The
able soldier had overrated his capacity.  All had risen to go to
their rooms.  Of a sudden we were startled by a loud rap on the
front door.  A servant opened it, and immediately I heard the
familiar voice of D'ri.

"Is they anybody here by the name o' Mister Bell?" he asked.

I ran to the door, and there stood D'ri, his clothes wet, his boots
muddy, for it had been raining.  Before he could speak I had my
arms around him, and he sank to his knees in my embrace.  He was
breathing heavily.

"Tired out--thet's whut's the matter," he muttered, leaning over on
one hand.  "Come through the woods t' save yer life, I did, an'
they was tight up t' me all the way."

"Poor fellow!" said the baroness, who stood at the door.  "Help him
in at once and give him a sip of brandy."

"Tuk me prisoner over there 'n the woods thet day," said he,
sinking into a chair and leaning forward, his head on his hands.
"They tuk 'n' they toted me over t' Canady, an' I tuk 'n' got away,
'n' they efter me.  Killed one on 'em thet was chasin' uv me over
'n the Beaver medders on the bog trail.  Hoss got t' wallerin' so
he hed t' come down.  Riz up out o' the grass 'n' ketched holt uv
'im 'fore he c'u'd pull a weepon.  Tuk this out uv his pocket, an'
I tried to git the boss out o' the mire, but didn't hev time."

He sat erect and proudly handed me a sheet of paper.  I opened it,
and read as follows:--


"To CAPTAIN ELIAS WILKINS, _Royal Fusiliers_.

"_My dear Captain_: You will proceed at once across the river with
a detail of five men mounted and three days' rations, and, if
possible, capture the prisoner who escaped early this morning,
making a thorough search of the woods in Jefferson County.  He has
information of value to the enemy, and I regard his death or
capture of high and immediate importance.  I am informed that the
young desperado who murdered my Lord of Pickford in the forest
below Clayton June 29, escaping, although badly wounded, is lying
at the country-seat of the Baroness de Ferre, a Frenchwoman, at
Leraysville, Jefferson County, New York.  It would gratify me if
you could accomplish one or both captures.  With respect, I am,

  "Your Obedient Servant,
    "R. SHEAFFER, _General Commanding_."

"They 'll be here," said D'ri.  "They 'll be here jest es sure es
God--'fore daylight, mebbe.  But I can't fight er dew nothin' till
I 've tied some vittles."

"You shall have supper," said the baroness, who, without delay,
went to the kitchen herself with a servant to look after it.  The
butler brought a pair of slippers and a dry coat, while I drew off
the boots of my good friend.  Then I gave him my arm as he limped
to the kitchen beside me.  The baroness and I sat near him as he
ate.

"Go upstairs and call the gentlemen," said she to the butler, "Do
not make any disturbance, but say I should like to speak with them
in the dining room."

"Is thet air hired man o' yours a Britisher?"  D'ri inquired as
soon as the butler was gone.

"He is--from Liverpool," said she.

"Thet's the hole 'n the fence," said he.  "Thet's where the goose
got away."

"The goose!  The geese!" said the baroness, thoughtfully.  "I do
not understand you."

"Went 'n' blabbed, thet's whut he done," said D'ri.  "Mebbe wrote
'em a letter, gol-dum his pictur'."

"Oh, I perceive!  I understand," said she; "and I send him away
to-morrow."

"Neck's broke with hunger," said D'ri.  "Never threw no vittles 'n
my basket with sech a splendid taste tew 'em es these hev."

The baroness looked at him with some show of worry.

"I beg your pardon," said she, "did you say the neck of you was
broken?"

I explained the idiom.

"Ain't hed nothin' t' eat since day 'fore yistiddy," said D'ri.
"Judas Priest!  I 'm all et up with hunger."

With old Burgundy and biscuit and venison and hot coffee he was
rapidly reviving.

"I 'm wondering where I will hide you both," said the baroness,
thoughtfully.

"Hed n't orter hev no rumpus here, 'n' go t' shootin' 'n' mebbe
spile yer house 'n' furnicher," said D'ri.  "'T ain't decent er 't
ain't nice.  We 'd better mek tracks an' put a mild er tew 'twixt
us 'n' here 'fore we hev any trouble.  'T ain't a-goin' t' be no
Sunday School.  Ef they can, they 're a-goin't' tek us dead er
'live.  Ef they ever tuk us we would n't be wuth shucks, nuther on
us, efter court martial."

"I shall not permit you to go," said the baroness.  "They may be
here now, about the house in the dark.  They would shoot you, they
would stab you, they would cause you to die as you went.  No, I
shall permit you not to go, There are four of them?  Very well, we
shall fight here, we shall conquer.  We have a general, a count, a
millionnaire, a marquis, a lawyer, an astronomer, a scout, and,"
she added, patting me on the shoulder, "_le brave capitaine_!  I
have four guns and three pistols, and M'sieur Bell has arms also.
We shall conquer.  We shall make them to bite the dust."

"Guns; did ye say?  Jerushy Jane!  Le' 's hev 'em," said D'ri.

"What did he call me?  Mon Dieu!  Jerushy Jane!  It is not I," said
the baroness.

Again I explained the difficulty.

"Ain't very proper-spoke," said D'ri, apologetically.  "Jest wan't'
say et them 'air guns er likely t' come handy here 'most any
minute.  Give us guns, 'n' we 'll sock it to 'em."

"We shall sock it to them, we shall indeed," said she, hurrying out
of the room.  "We shall make them to run for their lives."

They were all in the dining room--the men of the party--save the
general, who could not he awakened.   Guns and pistols were loaded.
I made a novel plan of defence that was unanimously approved.  I
posted a watch at every window.  A little after dawn the baroness,
from behind a curtain, saw a squad of horsemen coming through the
grove.

"Ici! they have come!" said she, in a loud whisper.  "There are not
four; there are many."

I took my detail of six men above-stairs.  Each had a strip of
lumber we had found in the shop, and each carefully raised a
window, waiting the signal.  I knew my peril, but I was never so
cool in my life.  If I had been wiser, possibly I should have felt
it the more.  The horsemen promptly deployed, covering every side
of the mansion.  They stood close, mounted, pistol and sabre ready.
Suddenly I gave the signal.  Then each of us thrust out the strip
of lumber stealthily, prodding the big drab cones on every side.
Hornets and wasps, a great swarm of them, sprang thick as seeds
from the hand of a sower.  It was my part to unhouse a colony of
the long, white-faced hornets.  Goaded by the ruin of their nests,
they saw the nodding heads below them, and darted at man and horse
like a night of arrows.  They put their hot spurs into flank and
face and neck.  I saw them strike and fall; they do hit hard, those
big-winged _Vespae_.  It was terrible, the swift charge of that
winged battalion of the air.  I heard howls of pain below me, and
the thunder of rushing feet.  The horses were rearing and plunging,
the men striking with their hats.

I heard D'ri shouting and laughing at his window.

"Give 'em hell, ye little blue devils!" he yelled; and there was
all evidence that they understood him.

Then, again, every man of us opened his window and fired a volley
at the scurrying mass.

One horse, rearing and leaping on his hind legs, came down across
the back of another, and the two fell heavily in a rolling,
convulsive heap.  One, as if blinded, bumped a tree, going over on
his withers, all fours flashing in the air.  Some tore off in the
thickets, as unmanageable as the wild moose.  More than half threw
their riders.  Not a man of them pulled a trigger: they were busy
enough, God knows.  Not one of them could have hit the sky with any
certainty.  I never saw such a torrent of horsehair and red caps.

"Whut!  Been on the back o' one o' 'em hosses?" said D'ri, telling
of it a long time after.  "'D ruther o' been shet up 'n a barrel
with a lot o' cats 'n' rolled downhill.  Good deal better fer my
health, an' I 'd 'a' luked more like a human bein' when I come out.
Them fellers--they did n't luk fit t' 'sociate with nuthin' er
nobody when we led 'em up t' the house--nut one on 'em."

Only one Britisher was brought down by our bullets, and he had been
the mark of D'ri: with him a rifle was never a plaything.  Five
others lay writhing in the grass, bereft of horse, deserted by
their comrades.  The smudges were ready, and the nets.  D'ri and I
put on the latter and ran out, placing a smudge row on every side
of the Hermitage.   The winged fighters were quickly driven away.
Of the helpless enemy one had staggered off in the brush; the
others lay groaning, their faces lumpy and one-sided.  A big
sergeant had a nose of the look and diameter of a goose-egg; one
carried a cheek as large and protuberant as the jowl of a porker's
head; and one had ears that stuck out like a puffed bladder.  They
were helpless.  We disarmed them and brought them in, doing all we
could for their comfort with blue clay and bruised plantain.  It
was hard on them, I have often thought, but it saved an ugly fight
among ladies, and, no doubt, many lives.  I know, if they had taken
us, D'ri and I would never have got back.

I have saved myself many a time by strategy, but chose the sword
always if there were an even chance.  And, God knows, if one had
ever a look at our bare bodies, he would see no sign of shirking on
either D'ri or me.




X

The shooting and shouting and the tramp of horse and man had roused
everybody in the big house.  Even the general came down to know
what was the matter.  The young ladies came, pale and frightened,
but in faultless attire.  I put an armed guard by the prisoners at
the door, under command of D'ri.  Then I had them bare the feet of
the four Britishers, knowing they could not run bootless in the
brush.  We organized a convoy,--the general and I,--and prepared to
start for the garrison.  We kept the smudges going, for now and
then we could hear the small thunder of hornet-wings above us.
There is a mighty menace in it, I can tell you, if they are angry.

"Jerushy Jane Pepper!" said D'ri, as he sat, rifle on his knee,
looking at his prisoners.  "Never thought nobody c'u'd luk s'
joemightyful cur'us.  Does mek a man humly t' hev any trouble with
them air willy-come-bobs."  He meant wasps.

I had had no opportunity for more than a word with the young
ladies.  I hoped it might come when I went in for a hasty breakfast
with the baroness, the count, the general, and Mr. Parish.  As we
were eating, Louison came in hurriedly.  She showed some agitation.

"What is the trouble, my dear?" said the baroness, in French.

"Eh bien, only this," said she: "I have dropped my ring in the
brook.  It is my emerald.  I cannot reach it."

"Too bad!  She has dropped her ring in the brook," said the
baroness, in English, turning to me.

"If she will have the kindness to take me there," I said to the
hostess, rising as I spoke, "I shall try to get it for her."

"M'sieur le Capitaine, you are very obliging," said she.  Then,
turning to Louison, she added in French: "Go with him.  He will
recover it for you."

It pleased and flattered me, the strategy of this wonderful young
creature.  She led me, with dainty steps, through a dewy garden
walk into the trail.

"Parbleu!" she whispered, "is it not a shame to take you from your
meat?  But I could not help it.  I had to see you; there is
something I wish to say."

"A pretty girl is better than meat," I answered quickly.  "I am
indebted to you."

"My! but you have a ready tongue," said she.  "It is with me a
pleasure to listen.  You are going away?  You shall not
return--perhaps?"

She was trying to look very gay and indifferent, but in her voice I
could detect a note of trouble.  The flame of passion, quenched for
a little time by the return of peril and the smoke of gunpowder,
flashed up in me.

"It is this," she went on: "I may wish you to do me a favor.  May I
have your address?"

"And you may command me," I said as I gave it to her.

"Have a care!" she said, laughing.  "I may ask you to do desperate
things--you may need all your valor.  The count and the
baroness--they may send us back to France."

"Which will please you," I remarked.

"Perhaps," she said quickly.  "Mon Dieu!  I do not know what I
want; I am a fool.  Take this.  Wear it when you are gone.  Not
that I care--but--it will make you remember."

She held in her fingers a flashing emerald on a tiny circlet of
gold.  Before I could answer she had laid it in my hard palm and
shut my hand upon it.

"Dieu!" she exclaimed, whispering, "I must return--I must hurry.
Remember, we did not find the ring."

I felt a great impulse to embrace her and confess my love.  But I
was not quick enough.  Before I could speak she had turned away and
was running.  I called to her, but she did not turn or seem to hear
me.  She and my opportunity were gone.

We stowed the prisoners in the big coach at the baroness, behind a
lively team of four.  Then my horse and one for D'ri were brought
up.

"Do not forget," said the baroness, holding my hand, "you are
always welcome in my house.  I hope, ma foi! that you will never
find happiness until you return."

The young ladies came not to the step where we were, but stood by
the count waving adieux.  Louison had a merry smile and a pretty
word of French for me; Louise only a sober look that made me sad,
if it did not speak for the same feeling in her.  The count was to
remain at the Hermitage, having sent to the chateau for a squad of
his armed retainers.  They were to defend the house, if, by chance,
the British should renew their attack.  Mr. Parish and his footman
and the general went with us, the former driving.  D'ri and I rode
on behind as the coach went off at a gallop.

He was a great whip, that man David Parish, who had built a big
mansion at Ogdensburg and owned so much of the north country those
days.  He was a gentleman when the founders of the proud families
of to-day were dickering in small merchandise.  Indeed, one might
look in vain for such an establishment as his north of Virginia.
This side the Atlantic there was no stable of horses to be compared
with that he had--splendid English thoroughbreds, the blood of
which is now in every great family of American horses.  And, my
faith! he did love to put them over the road.  He went tearing up
hill and down at a swift gallop, and the roads were none too smooth
in that early day.  Before leaving home he had sent relays ahead to
await his coming every fifteen miles of the journey: he always did
that if he had far to go.  This time he had posted them clear to
the Harbor.  The teams were quickly shifted; then we were off again
with a crack of the whip and a toot of the long horn.  He held up
in the swamps, but where footing was fair, the high-mettled horses
had their heads and little need of urging.  We halted at an inn for
a sip of something and a bite to eat.

"Parish," said the general, rising on stiffened legs, "I like your
company and I like your wine, but your driving is a punishment."

D'ri was worn out with lack of sleep and rest, but he had hung
doggedly to his saddle.

"How do you feel?" I asked him as we drew up on each side of the
coach.

"Split t' the collar," said he, soberly, as he rested an elbow on
his pommel.

We got to headquarters at five, and turned over the prisoners.  We
had never a warmer welcome than that of the colonel.

"I congratulate you both," he said as he brought the rum-bottle
after we had made our report.  "You've got more fight in you than a
wolverene.  Down with your rum and off to your beds, and report
here at reveille.  I have a tough job for you to-morrow."




XI

It was, indeed, tougher business than we had yet known--a dash into
the enemy's country, where my poor head was in excellent demand.
D'ri and I were to cross the lake with a band of raiders, a troop
of forty, under my command.  We were to rescue some prisoners in a
lockup on the other side.  They were to be shot in the morning, and
our mission therefore admitted of no delay.  Our horses had been
put aboard a brig at midnight, and soon after the noon mess we
dropped down the lake, going into a deep, wooded cove south of the
Grenadier Island.  There we lay waiting for nightfall.  A big wind
was howling over the woods at sunset, and the dark came on its
wings an hour ahead of time.  The night was black and the lake
noisy when we got under way, bound for a flatboat ferry.  Our
skipper, it turned out, had little knowledge of those waters.  He
had shortened sail, and said he was not afraid of the weather.  The
wind, out of the southeast, came harder as it drove us on.  Before
we knew it, the whole kit and boodle of us were in a devil of a
shakeup there in the broad water.  D'ri and I were down among the
horses and near being trampled under in the roll.  We tried to put
about then, but the great gusts of wind made us lower sail and drop
anchor in a hurry.  Soon the horses were all in a tumble and one on
top of the other.  We had to jump from back to back to save
ourselves.  It was no pretty business, I can tell you, to get to
the stairway.  D'ri was stripped of a boot-leg, and I was cut in
the chin by a front hoof, going ten feet or so to the upper deck.
To the man who was never hit in the chin by a horse's hoof let me
say there is no such remedy for a proud spirit.  Bullets are much
easier to put up with and keep a civil tongue in one's head.  That
lower deck was a kind of horses' hell.  We had to let them alone.
They got astraddle of one another's necks, and were cut from ear to
fetlock--those that lived, for some of them, I could see, were
being trampled to death.  How many I never knew, for suddenly we
hit a reef there in the storm and the black night.  I knew we had
drifted to the north shore, and as the sea began to wash over us it
was every man for himself.  The brig went up and down like a
sledge-hammer, and at every blow her sides were cracking and
caving.  She keeled over suddenly, and was emptied of horse and
man.  A big wave flung me far among the floundering horses.  My
fingers caught in a wet mane; I clung desperately between crowding
flanks.  Then a big wave went over us.  I hung on, coming up
astride my capture.  He swam vigorously, his nose high, blowing
like a trumpet.  I thought we were in for a time of it, and had
very little hope for any landing, save in kingdom come.  Every
minute I was head under in the wash, and the roaring filled me with
that mighty terror of the windfall.  But, on my word, there is no
captain like a good horse in bad water.  Suddenly I felt him hit
the bottom and go forward on his knees.  Then he reared up, and
began to jump in the sand.  A big wave washed him down again.  He
fell on his side in a shallow, but rose and ran wearily over a soft
beach.  In the blackness around me I could see nothing.  A branch
whipped me in the face, and I ducked.  I was not quick enough; it
was like fencing in the dark.  A big bough hit me, raking the
withers of my horse, and I rolled off headlong in a lot of bushes.
The horse went on, out of hearing, but I was glad enough to lie
still, for I had begun to know of my bruises.  In a few minutes I
took off my boots and emptied them, and wrung my blouse, and lay
back, cursing my ill luck.

But that year of 1813 had the kick of ill fortune in it for every
mother's son of us there in the North country.  I have ever noticed
that war goes in waves of success or failure; If we had had Brown
or Scott to lead us that year, instead of Wilkinson, I believe it
had had a better history.  Here was I in the enemy's country.  God
knew where, or how, or when I should come out of it.  I thought of
D'ri and how it had gone with him in that hell of waters.  I knew
it would be hard to drown him.  We were so near shore, if he had
missed the rocks I felt sure he would come out safely.  I thought
of Louison and Louise, and wondered if ever I should see them
again.  Their faces shone upon me there in the windy darkness, and
one as brightly as the other.  Afterwhiles I drew my wet blouse
over me and went asleep, shivering.

A familiar sound woke me--that of the reveille.  The sun was
shining, the sky clear, the wind had gone down.  A crow sat calling
in a tree above my head.  I lay in a strip of timber, thin and
narrow, on the lake shore.  Through the bushes I could see the
masts of the brig slanting out of water some rods away.  Beyond the
timber was a field of corn, climbing a side-hill that sloped off to
a level, grassy plain.  Beyond the hill-top, reveille was still
sounding.  A military camp was near me, and although I made no
move, my mind was up and busy as the drumsticks over the hill.  I
sat as quiet as a cat at a mouse-hole, looking down at my uniform,
not, indeed, the most healthful sort of dress for that country.
All at once I caught sight of a scarecrow in the corn.  I laughed
at the odd grotesquery of the thing--an old frock-coat and trousers
of olive-green, faded and torn and fat with straw.  A stake driven
through its collar into the earth, and crowned with an ancient,
tall hat of beaver, gave it a backbone.  An idea came to me.  I
would rob the scarecrow and hide my uniform.  I ran out and hauled
it over, and pulled the stuffing out of it.  The coat and trousers
were made for a stouter man.  I drew on the latter, fattening my
figure with straw to fill them.  That done, I quickly donned the
coat.  Each sleeve-end fell to my fingertips, and its girth would
have circled a flour-barrel and buttoned with room to spare.  But
with my stuffing of straw it came around me as snug at the belt as
the coat of a bear.  I took alarm as I closed the buttons.  For
half a minute I had heard a drum-tap coming nearer.  It was the
measured _tap! tap! tap-tap-tap_! so familiar to me.  Now I could
hear the tread of feet coming with it back of the hill.  How soon
they would heave in sight I was unable to reckon, but I dared not
run for cover.  So I thrust my scabbard deep in the soft earth,
pulled down the big beaver hat over my face, muffled my neck with
straw, stuck the stake in front of me to steady myself, and stood
stiff as any scarecrow in Canada.  Before I was done a column,
scarlet-coated, came out in the level beyond the hillside.  Through
a hole in the beaver I could see them clearly.  They came on, rank
after rank.  They deployed, forming an open square, scarlet-sided,
on the green turf, the gap toward me.  Then came three, walking
stiffly in black coats, a squad leading them.  The thing I had
taken for a white visor was a blindfold.  Their heads were bare.  I
could see, now, they were in shackles, their arms behind them.
They were coming to their death--some of my unlucky comrades.  God
pity them!  A spy might as well make his peace with Heaven, if he
were caught those days, and be done with hope.  Suspicion was
enough to convict on either side of the water that year.  As my
feet sank deeper in the soft earth I felt as if I were going down
to my grave.  The soldiers led them into the gap, standing them
close together, backs to me, The squad drew off.  The prisoners
stood erect, their faces turning up a little, as if they were
looking into the clear, blue sky.  I could see them waver as they
stood waiting.  The sharpshooters advanced, halting as they raised
their rifles.  To my horror, I saw the prisoners were directly
between me and them.  Great God! was I also of that little company
about to die?  But I dared not move a step.  I stood still,
watching, trembling.  An officer in a shining helmet was speaking
to the riflemen.  His helmet seemed to jump and quiver as he moved
away.  Those doomed figures began to reel and sway as they waited.
The shiny barrels lifted a little, their muzzles pointing at them
and at me.  The corn seemed to duck and tremble as it waited the
volley.  A great black ball shot across the sky in a long curve,
and began to fall.  Then came the word, a flash of fire, a cloud of
smoke, a roar of rifles that made me jump in my tracks.  I heard
bullets cuffing the corn, I felt the dirt fly up and scatter over
me, but was unhurt, a rigid, motionless man of straw.  I saw my
countrymen reel, their legs go limp as rags, their bodies fall
silently forward.  The soldiers stood a moment, then a squad went
after the dead with litters.  Forming in fours, they marched away
as they had come, their steps measured by that regular _rap! rap!
rap-rap-rap_! of the drum.  The last rank went out of sight.  I
moved a little and pulled the stake, and quickly stuck it again,
for there were voices near.  I stood waiting as stiff as a poker.
Some men were running along the beach, two others were coming
through the corn.  They passed within a few feet of me on each
side.  I heard them talking with much animation.  They spoke of the
wreck.  When they were well by me I faced about, watching them.
They went away in the timber, down to a rocky point, where I knew
the wreck was visible.

They were no sooner out of sight than I pulled the stake and sabre,
and shoved the latter under my big coat.  Then I lifted the beaver
and looked about me.  There was not a soul in sight.  From that
level plain the field ran far to a thick wood mounting over the
hill.  I moved cautiously that way, for I was in the path of people
who would be coming to see the wreck.  I got near the edge of the
distant wood, and hearing a noise, halted, and stuck my stake, and
drew my hands back in the sleeves, and stood like a scarecrow,
peering through my hat.  Near me, in the woods, I could hear a
cracking of sticks and a low voice.  Shortly two Irishmen stuck
their heads out of a bush.  My heart gave a leap in me, for I saw
they were members of my troop.

"Hello, there!" I called in a loud voice, It startled them.  They
turned their heads to see where the voice came from, and stood
motionless.  I pulled my stake and made for them on the run.  I
should have known better, for the sight of me would have tried the
legs of the best trooper that ever sat in a saddle.  As they told
me afterward, it was enough to make a lion yelp.

"Holy Mother!" said one, as they broke through the bush, running
for their lives.  I knew not their names, but I called them as
loudly as I dared.  They went on, never slacking pace.  It was a
bad go, for I was burning for news of D'ri and the rest of them.
Now I could hear some heavy animal bounding in the brush as if
their running had startled him.  I went back to the corn for
another stand.  Suddenly a horse came up near me, cropping the
brush.  I saw he was one off the boat, for he had bridle and
saddle, a rein hanging in two strings, and was badly cut.  My
friend! the sight of a horse did warm me to the toes.  He got a
taste of the tender corn presently, and came toward me as he ate.
In a moment I jumped to the saddle, and he went away leaping like a
wild deer.  He could not have been more frightened if I had dropped
on him out of the sky.  I never saw such energy in flesh and blood
before.  He took a mighty fright as my hand went to his withers,
but the other had a grip on the pommel, and I made the stirrups.  I
leaned for the strings of the rein, but his neck was long, and I
could not reach them.  Before I knew it we were tearing over the
hill at a merry pace, I can tell you.  I was never so put to it for
the right thing to do, but I clung on.  The big hat shook down upon
my collar.  In all my life I never saw a hat so big.  Through the
break in it I could see a farm-house.  In a jiffy the horse had
cleared a fence, and was running, with the feet of terror, in a
dusty road.  I grew angry at myself as we tore along--I knew not
why.  It was a rage of discomfort, I fancy, for somehow, I never
felt so bound and cluttered, so up in the air and out of place in
my body.  The sabre was working loose and hammering my knee; the
big hat was rubbing my nose, the straw chafing my chin.  I had
something under my arm that would sway and whack the side of the
horse every leap he made.  I bore upon it hard, as if it were the
jewel of my soul.  I wondered why, and what it might be.   In a
moment the big hole of my hat came into conjunction with my right
eye.  On my word, it was the stake! How it came there I have never
known, but, for some reason, I held to it.  I looked neither to
right nor left, but sat erect, one hand on the hilt of my sabre,
the other in the mane of my horse, knowing full well I was the most
hideous-looking creature in the world.  If I had come to the gate
of heaven I believe St. Peter would have dropped his keys.  The
straw worked up, and a great wad of it hung under my chin like a
bushy beard.  I would have given anything for a sight of myself,
and laughed to think of it, although facing a deadly peril, as I
knew.  But I was young and had no fear in me those days.  Would
that a man could have his youth to his death-bed!  It was a leap in
the dark, but I was ready to take my chances.

Evidently I was nearing a village.  Groups of men were in the shady
thoroughfare; children thronged the dooryards.  There was every
sign of a holiday.  As we neared them I caught my sabre under my
knee, and drew my hands into the long sleeves and waved them
wildly, whooping like an Indian.  They ran back to the fences with
a start of fear.  As I passed them they cheered loudly, waving
their hats and roaring with laughter.  An old horse, standing
before an inn, broke his halter and crashed over a fence.  A scared
dog ran for his life in front of me, yelping as he leaped over a
stone wall.  Geese and turkeys flew in the air as I neared them.
The people had seemed to take me for some village youth on a
masquerade.  We flashed into the open country before the sound of
cheering had died away.  On we went over a long strip of hard soil,
between fields, and off in the shade of a thick forest.  My horse
began to tire.  I tried to calm him by gentle words, but I could
give him no confidence in me.  He kept on, laboring hard and
breathing heavily, as if I were a ton's weight.  We came to another
clearing and fields of corn.  A little out of the woods, and near
the road, was a log house white-washed from earth to eaves.  By the
gate my horse went down.  I tumbled heavily in the road, and
turning, caught him by the bits.  The big hat had shot off my head;
the straw had fallen away.  A woman came running out of the open
door.  She had bare feet, a plump and cheery face.

"Tonnerre!" said she.  "Qu'est ce que cela?"

"My countrywoman," said I, in French, feeling in my under-trousers
for a bit of silver, and tossing it to her, "I am hungry."

"And I have no food to sell," said she, tossing it back.  "You
should know I am of France and not of England.  Come, you shall
have enough, and for no price but the eating.  You have a tired
horse.  Take him to the stable, and I will make you a meal."

I led my horse to the stable, scraped him of lather and dirt, gave
him a swallow of water, and took the same myself, for I had a
mighty thirst in me.  When I came in, she had eggs and potatoes and
bacon over the fire, and was filling the tea-kettle.

"On my soul," said she, frankly, "you are the oddest-looking man I
ever saw.  Tell me, why do you carry the long club?"

I looked down.  There it was under my arm.  It surprised me more
than anything I ever found myself doing.

"Madame, it is because I am a fool," I said as I flung it out of
the door.

"It is strange," said she.  "Your clothes--they are not your own;
they are as if they were hung up to dry.  And you have a sabre and
spurs."

"Of that the less said the better," I answered, pulling out the
sabre.  "Unless--unless, madame, you would like me to die young."

"Mon Dieu!" she whispered.  "A Yankee soldier?"

"With good French blood in him," I added, "who was never so hungry
in all his life."

I went out of the door as I spoke, and shoved my sabre under the
house.

"I have a daughter on the other side of the lake," said she,
"married to a Yankee, and her husband is fighting the British with
the rest of you."

"God help him!" said I.

"Amen!" said she, bringing my food to the table.  "The great
Napoleon he will teach them a lesson."

She was a widow, as she told me, living there alone with two young
daughters who were off at a picnic in the near town.  We were
talking quietly when a familiar voice brought me standing.

"Judas Priest!" it said.  D'ri stood in the doorway, hatless and
one boot missing--a sorry figure of a man.

"Hidin' over 'n th' woods yender," he went on as I took his hand.
"See thet air brown hoss go by.  Knew 'im soon es I sot eyes on
'im--use' t' ride 'im myself.  Hed an idee 't wus you 'n the
saddle--sot s' kind o' easy.  But them air joemightyful do's!
Jerushy Jane!  would n't be fit t' skin a skunk in them do's, would
it?"

"Got 'em off a scarecrow," I said.

"'Nough t' mek a painter ketch 'is breath, they wus."

The good woman bade him have a chair at the table, and brought more
food.

"Neck 's broke with hunger, 't is sartin," said he, as he began to
eat.  "Hev t' light out o' here purty middlin' soon.  'T ain' no
safe place t' be.  'T won' never dew fer us t' be ketched."

We ate hurriedly, and when we had finished, the good woman gave us
each an outfit of apparel left by her dead husband.  It was rather
snug for D'ri, and gave him an odd look.  She went out of doors
while we were dressing.  Suddenly she came back to the door.

"Go into the cellar," she whispered.  "They are coming!"




XII

I found the door, and D'ri flung our "duds" into the darkness that
lay beyond it.  Then he made down the ladder, and I after him.  It
was pitch-dark in the cellar--a deep, dank place with a rank odor
of rotting potatoes.  We groped our way to a corner, and stood
listening.  We heard the tramp of horses in the dooryard and the
clinic of spurs on the stone step.

"Ah, my good woman," said a man with a marked English accent, "have
you seen any Yankees?  Woods are full of them around here.  No?
Well, by Jove! you're a good-looking woman.  Will you give me a
kiss?" He crossed the floor above us, and she was backing away.

"Come, come, don't be so shy, my pretty woman," said he, and then
we could hear her struggling up and down the floor.  I was climbing
the ladder, in the midst of it, my face burning with anger, and
D'ri was at my heels.  As the door opened, I saw she had fallen.
The trooper was bending to kiss her.  I had him by the collar and
had hauled him down before he discovered us.  In a twinkling D'ri
had stripped him of sword and pistol.  But it was one of the most
hopeless situations in all my life.  Many muzzles were pointing at
us through the door and window.  Another hostile move from either
would have ended our history then and there.  I let go and stood
back.  The man got to his feet--a handsome soldier in the full
uniform of a British captain.

"Ah, there's a fine pair!" he said coolly, whipping a leg of his
trousers with his glove.  "I 'll teach you better manners, my young
fellow.  Some o' those shipwrecked Yankees," he added, turning to
his men.  "If they move without an order, pin 'em up to the wall."

He picked up his hat leisurely, stepping in front of D'ri.

"Now, my obliging friend," said he, holding out his hand, "I'll
trouble you for my sword and pistol."

D'ri glanced over at me, an ugly look in his eye.  He would have
fought to his death then and there if I had given him the word.  He
was game to the core when once his blood was up, the same old D'ri.

[Illustration: "He would have fought to his death then and there if
I had given him the word."]

"Don't fight," I said.

He had cocked the pistol, and stood braced, the sword in his right
hand.  I noticed a little quiver in the great sinews of his wrist.
I expected to see that point of steel shoot, with a quick stab,
into the scarlet blouse before me.

"Shoot 'n' be damned!" said D'ri.  "'Fore I die ye'll hev a hole er
tew 'n thet air karkiss o' yourn.  Sha'n't give up no weepon till
ye've gin me yer word ye 'll let thet air woman alone."

I expected a volley then.  A very serious look came over the face
of the captain.  He wiped his brow with a handkerchief.  I could
see that he had been drinking.

"Ah, I see!  You have an interest in her.  Well, my man, I want no
share in your treasures.  I accept the condition."

Evil as was the flavor of this poor concession, D'ri made the best
of it.

"She's an honest woman for all I know," said he, handing over the
weapons.  "Ain't a-goin' t' see no ledy mishused--nut ef I can help
it."

We gave ourselves up hand and foot to the enemy; there was no way
out of it.  I have read in the story-books how men of great nerve
and skill have slaughtered five to one, escaping with no great loss
of blood.  Well, of a brave man I like to believe good things.  My
own eyes have seen what has made me slow to doubt a story of
prowess that has even the merit of possibility.  But when there are
only two of you, and one without arms, and you are in a corner, and
there are ten pistols pointing at you a few feet away, and as many
sabres ready to be drawn, I say no power less remarkable than that
of God or a novelist can bring you out of your difficulty.  You
have your choice of two evils--surrender or be cut to pieces.  We
had neither of us any longing to be slashed with steel and bored
with bullets, and to no end but a good epitaph.

They searched the cellar and found our clothes, and wrapped them in
a bundle.  Then they tied our hands behind us and took us along the
road on which I had lately ridden.  A crowd came jeering to the
highway as we passed the little village.  It was my great fear that
somebody would recognize either one or both of us.

Four of our men were sitting in a guardhouse at the British camp.
After noon mess a teamster drove up with a big wagon.  Guards came
and shackled us in pairs, D'ri being wrist to wrist with me.  They
put a chain and ball on D'ri's leg also.  I wondered why, for no
other was treated with like respect.   Then they bundled us all
into the wagon, now surrounded by impatient cavalry.  They put a
blindfold over the eyes of each prisoner, and went away at a lively
pace.  We rode a long time, as it seemed to me, and by and by I
knew we had come to a city, for I could hear the passing of many
wagons and the murmur of a crowd.  Some were shouting, "Shoot the
d--d Yankees!" and now and then a missile struck among us.  There
is nothing so heartless and unthinking as a crowd, the world over.
I could tell presently, by the creak of the evener and the stroke
of the hoofs, that we were climbing a long hill.  We stopped
shortly; then they began helping us out.  They led us forward a few
paces, the chain rattling on a stone pavement.  When we heard the
bang of an iron door behind us, they unlocked the heavy fetter.
This done, they led us along a gravel walk and over a sounding
stretch of boards,--a bridge, I have always thought,--through
another heavy door and down a winding flight of stone steps.  They
led us on through dark passages, over stone paving, and halted us,
after a long walk, letting our eyes free.  We were in black
darkness.  There were two guards before and two behind us bearing
candles.   They unshackled us, and opened a lattice door of heavy
iron, bidding us enter.  I knew then that we were going into a
dungeon, deep under the walls of a British fort somewhere on the
frontier.  A thought stung me as D'ri and I entered this black hole
and sat upon a heap of straw.  Was this to be the end of our
fighting and of us?

"You can have a candle a day," said a guard as he blew out the one
he carried, laying it, with a tinder-box, on a shelf in the wall of
rock beside me.  Then they filed out, and the narrow door shut with
a loud bang.  We peered through at the fading flicker of the
candles.  They threw wavering, ghostly shadows on every wall of the
dark passage, and suddenly went out of sight.  We both stood
listening a moment.

"Curse the luck!" I whispered presently.

"Jest as helpless es if we was hung up by the heels," said D'ri,
groping his way to the straw pile.  "Ain' no use gittin' wrathy."

"What 'll we do?" I whispered.

"Dunno," said he; "an' when ye dunno whut t' dew, don' dew nuthin'.
Jest stan' still; thet's whut I b'lieve in."

He lighted the candle, and went about, pouring its glow upon every
wall and into every crack and corner of our cell--a small chamber
set firm in masonry, with a ceiling so far above our heads we could
see it but dimly, the candle lifted arm's-length.

"Judas Priest!" said D'ri, as he stopped the light with thumb and
finger.  "I 'm goin' t' set here 'n th' straw luk an ol' hen 'n'
ile up m' thinker 'n' set 'er goin'.  One o' them kind hes t' keep
'is mouth shet er he can't never dew ho thinkin'.  Bymby, like es
not, I 'll hev suthin' t1 say et 'll 'mount t' suthin'."

We lay back on the straw in silence.  I did a lot of thinking that
brought me little hope.  Thoughts of Louison and Louise soon led me
out of prison.  After a little time I went philandering in the
groves of the baroness with the two incomparable young ladies.  I
would willingly have stood for another bullet if I could have had
another month of their company.  The next thought of my troubles
came with the opening of the iron door.  I had been sound asleep.
A guard came in with water and a pot of stewed beef and potatoes.

"Thet air's all right," said D'ri, dipping into it with a spoon.

We ate with a fine relish, the guard, a sullen, silent man with a
rough voice that came out of a bristling mustache, standing by the
door.

"Luk a-here," said D'ri to the guard as we finished eating, "I want
t' ast you a question.  Ef you hed a purty comf'table hum on
t'other side, 'n' few thousan' dollars 'n the bank, 'n' bosses 'n'
everything fixed fer a good time, 'n' all uv a sudden ye found
yerself 'n sech a gol-dum dungeon es this here, what 'u'd you dew?"

The guard was fixing the wick of his candle, and made no answer.

"Want ye t' think it all over," said D'ri.  "See ef ye can't think
o' suthin' soothin' t' say.  God knows we need it."

The guard went away without answering.

"Got him thinkin'," said D'ri, as he lighted the candle.  "He can
help us some, mebbe.  Would n't wonder ef he was good et cipherin'."

"If he offered to take the two thousand, I don't see how we'd give
it to him," said I.  "He would n't take our promise for it."

"Thet ain' a-goin' t' bother us any," said D'ri.  "Hed thet all
figgered out long ago."

He gave me the candle and lay down, holding his ear close to the
stone floor and listening.  Three times he shifted his ear from one
point to another.  Then he beckoned to me.

"Jest hol' yer ear there 'n' listen," he whispered.

I gave him the candle, and with my ear to the floor I could hear
the flow of water below us.  The sound went away in the distance
and then out of hearing.  "After a while it came again.

"What does it mean?" I asked.

"Cipherin' a leetle over thet air," said he, as he made a long
scratch on the floor with his flint.  Then he rubbed his chin,
looking down at it.  "Hain' jest eggzac'ly med up my mind yit," he
added.

We blew out the light and lay back, whispering.  Then presently we
heard the coming of footsteps.  Two men came to the door with a
candle, one being the guard we knew.

"Come, young fellow," said the latter, as he unlocked the door and
beckoned to me; "they want you upstairs."

We both got to our feet.

"Not you," he growled, waving D'ri back.  "Not ready fer you yet."

He laid hold of my elbow and snapped a shackle on my wrist.  Then
they led me out, closing the door with a bang that echoed in the
far reaches of the dark alley, and tied a thick cloth over my eyes.

"Good luck!" D'ri cried out as they took me away.

"For both," I answered as cheerfully as I could.

They led me through winding passages and iron doors, with that
horrible clank of the prison latch, and up flights of stone till I
felt as lost as one might who falls whirling in the air from a
great height.  We soon came out upon a walk of gravel, where I
could feel the sweet air blowing into my face.  A few minutes more
and we halted, where the guard, who had hold of my elbow, rang a
bell.  As the door swung open they led me in upon a soft carpet.
Through the cloth I could see a light.

"Bring him in, bring him in!" a voice commanded impatiently--a
deep, heavy voice the sound of which I have not yet forgotten.  The
guard was afraid of it.  His hand trembled as he led me on.

"Take off the blindfold," said that voice again.

As it fell away, I found myself in a large and beautiful room.  My
eyes were dazzled by the light of many candles, and for a little I
had to close them.  I stood before two men.  One sat facing me at a
black table of carved oak--a man of middle age, in the uniform of a
British general.  Stout and handsome, with brown eyes, dark hair
and mustache now half white, and nose aquiline by the least turn,
he impressed me as have few men that ever crossed my path.  A young
man sat lounging easily in a big chair beside him, his legs
crossed, his delicate fingers teasing a thin mustache.  I noticed
that his hands were slim and hairy.  He glanced up at me as soon as
I could bear the light.  Then he sat looking idly at the carpet,

The silence of the room was broken only by the scratch of a quill
in the hand of the general.  I glanced about me.  On the wall was a
large painting that held my eye: there was something familiar in
the face.  I saw presently it was that of the officer I had fought
in the woods, the one who fell before me.  I turned my head; the
young man was looking up at me.  A smile had parted his lips.  They
were the lips of a rake, it seemed to me.  A fine set of teeth
showed between them.

"Do you know him?" he asked coolly.

"I have not the honor," was my reply.

"What is your name?" the general demanded in the deep tone I had
heard before.

"Pardon me," said the young man, quietly, as if he were now weary
of the matter, "I do not think it necessary."

There was a bit of silence.  The general looked thoughtfully at the
young man.

"If your Lordship will let me--" he went on.

"My dear sir," the other interrupted, in the same weary and
lethargic manner, "I can get more reliable knowledge from other
sources.  Let the fellow go back."

"That will do," said the general to the guard, who then covered my
eyes and led me back to prison.

Lying there in the dark, I told D'ri all I knew of my mysterious
journey.  My account of the young man roused him to the soul.

"Wha' kind uv a nose hed he?" he inquired.

"Roman," I said.

"Bent in at the p'int a leetle?"

"Yes."

"And black hair shingled short?"

"Yes."

"An' tall, an' a kind uv a nasty, snookin', mis'able-lookin' cuss?"

"Just about the look of him," I said.

"Judas Priest!  He's one o' them sneks et tuk me when you was
fightin' t' other feller over there 'n the woods."

"Looks rather bad for us," I remarked.

"Does hev a ruther squeaky luk tew it," said he.  "All we got t'
dew is t' keep breathin' jest es nat'ral 'n' easy es can be till we
fergit how.  May fool 'em fust they know."

I had a high notion, those days, of the duty of a soldier.  My
father had always told me there was no greater glory for anybody
than that of a brave death.  Somehow the feeling got to be part of
me.  While I had little fear of death, I dreaded to be shot like a
felon.  But I should be dying for my country, and that feeling
seemed to light the shadows.  When I fell asleep, after much worry,
it was to dream of my three countrymen who had fallen to their
faces there by the corn.  I awoke to find the guard in our cell,
and D'ri and he whispering together.  He had come with our
breakfast.

"All I want," D'ri was saying, "is a piece of iron, with a sharp
end, half es long es yer arm."

He made no answer, that big, sullen, bull-dog man who brought our
food to us.  When he had gone, D'ri lay over and began laughing
under his breath.

"His thinker's goin' luk a sawmill," he whispered.  "Would n't
wonder ef it kep' 'im awake nights.  He was askin' 'bout thet air
tew thousan' dollars.  Ef they 'll let us alone fer three days, we
'll be out o' here.  Now, you mark my word."

"How?" I inquired.

"Jest a leetle job o' slidin' downhill," he said.  "There's a big
drain-pipe goes under this cell--t' the river, prob'ly.  He says
it's bigger 'n a barrel."

We saved our candle that day, and walked up and down, from wall to
wall, for exercise.  Our hopes were high when we heard footsteps,
but they fell suddenly, for, as we listened, we could hear the
tramp of a squad of men.  They came to our cell, and took us
upstairs, blind-folded as before, to a bath-room, where the
uniforms, discarded the day of our capture, were waiting for us,
newly pressed.  Our bath over, they directed us to put them on.
They gave us new hats, for our own had been lost the night of the
wreck, covered our eyes, and led us through many doors and alleys
into the open air.  It was dark, I knew, for as we entered a
carriage I could see dimly the glow of a lantern hanging over the
wheel.  The carriage went away swiftly on a level road.  We sat
knee to knee, with two men facing us, and not a word was spoken.
We could hear hoofs falling, the rattle of bit and rein, the creak
of saddle-leather on each side of us.  We must have gone a long
journey when the carriage halted.  They pulled us out roughly and
led us up three steps and across a deep veranda.  A bell rang, a
door swung open, a flood of light fell on us, filtering to our
eyes.  Entering, we could feel a carpet under us, and took a dozen
paces or more before they bade us halt.  We heard only the
low-spoken order and the soft tread of our feet.  There was a dead
silence when they removed our fetters and unbound our eyes.  We
were standing in a big and sumptuous drawing-room.  A company of
gentlemen sat near us in arm-chairs; there were at least a score of
them.  Round tables of old mahogany stood near, on which were
glasses and packs of cards and wine-bottles.  The young man who sat
with the general and answered to "your Lordship" was approaching
me, hand extended.

"Glad to see you; sit down," he said in the same quiet, languid,
forceful tone I had heard before.

It was all very odd.  The guards were gone; we were apparently as
free as any of them.

"I shall try to make you comfortable," he remarked.  A servant
began filling a row of glasses.  "We have here wine and wit and all
the accessories, including women.  I should introduce you, but I
have not the honor of your acquaintance.  Let it suffice to say
these are my friends" (he turned to those who sat about), "and,
gentlemen, these are my enemies," he added, turning to us.  "Let us
hope they may die happy."

"And with a fighting chance," I added, lifting the glass without
tasting it.

D'ri sat, his brows lifted, his hands in his pockets, his legs
crossed.  He looked curiously from one to another.

"Horton," said his Lordship, as he sat down, leaning lazily on the
arm of his chair, "will you have them bring down the prisoners?"

The servant left the room.  Some of the men were talking together
in low tones; they were mostly good-looking and well dressed.

"Gentlemen," said his Lordship, rising suddenly, "I'm going to turn
you out of here for a moment--they're a shy lot.  Won't you go into
the library?"

They all rose and went out of a door save one, a bald man of middle
age, half tipsy, who begged of his "Ludship" the privilege of
remaining.

"Sir Charles," said the young man, still lounging in his chair as
he spoke, in that cold, calm tone of his, "you annoy me.  Go at
once!" and he went.

They covered our faces with napkins of white linen.  Then we heard
heavy steps, the clank of scabbards on a stairway, the feet of
ladies, and the swish of their gowns.  With a quick movement our
faces were uncovered.  I rose to my feet, for there before me stood
Louison and the Baroness de Ferre, between two guards, and, behind
them, Louise, her eyes covered, her beautiful head bent low.  I
could see that she was crying.  The truth came to me in a flash of
thought.  They had been taken after we left; they were prisoners
brought here to identify us.  A like quickness of perception had
apparently come to all.  We four stood looking at one another with
no sign of recognition.  My face may have shown the surprise and
horror in me, but shortly I had recovered my stony calm.  The
ladies were dressed finely, with the taste and care I had so much
admired.  Louison turned away from me with a splendid dignity and
stood looking up at the wall, her hands behind her, a toe of one
shoe tapping the floor impatiently.  It was a picture to remember a
lifetime.  I could feel my pulse quicken as I looked upon her.  The
baroness stood, sober-faced, her eyes looking down, her fan moving
slowly.  His Lordship rose and came to Louise.

"Come, now, my pretty prisoner; it is disagreeable, but you must
forgive me," he said.

[Illustration: "Come, now, my pretty prisoner; it is disagreeable,
but you must forgive me."]

She turned away from him, drying her eyes.  Then presently their
beauty shone upon me.

"Grace au ciel!" she exclaimed, a great joy in her eyes and voice.
"It is M'sieur Bell.  Sister--baroness--it is M'sieur Bell!"

I advanced to meet her, and took her hand, kissing it reverently.
She covered her face, her hand upon my shoulder, and wept in
silence.  If it meant my death, I should die thanking God I knew,
or thought I knew, that she loved me.

"Ah, yes; it is M'sieur Bell--poor fellow!" said Louison, coming
quickly to me.  "And you, my dear, you are Ma'm'selle Louise."

She spoke quickly in French, as if quite out of patience with the
poor diplomacy of her sister.

"I knew it was you, for I saw the emerald on your finger," she
added, turning to me, "but I could not tell her."

"I am glad, I am delighted, that she spoke to me," I said.  I
desired to save the fair girl, whose heart was ever as a child's,
any sorrow for what she had done.  "I was about to speak myself.
It is so great a pleasure to see you all I could not longer endure
silence."

"They made us prisoners; they bring us here.  Oh, m'sieur, it is
terrible!" said the baroness.

"And he is such a horrible-looking monkey!" said Louison.

"Do they treat you well?" I asked.

"We have a big room and enough to eat.  It is not a bad prison, but
it is one terrible place," said the baroness.  "There is a big
wall; we cannot go beyond it."

"And that hairy thing!  He is in love with Louise.  He swears he
will never let us go," said Louison, in a whisper, as she came
close to me, "unless--unless she will marry him."

"Ah! a tea-party," said his Lordship, coming toward us.  "Pardon
the interruption.  I have promised to return these men at nine.  It
is now ten minutes of the hour.  Ladies, I wish you all a very good
night."

He bowed politely.  They pressed my hand, leaving me with such
anxiety in their faces that I felt it more than my own peril,
Louison gave me a tender look out of her fine eyes, and the thought
of it was a light to my soul in many an hour of darkness.   She had
seemed so cool, so nonchalant, I was surprised to feel the tremor
in her nerves.  I knew not words to say when Louise took my hand.

"Forgive me--good-by!" said she.

It was a faint whisper out of trembling lips.  I could see her soul
in her face then.  It was lighted with trouble and a nobler beauty
than I had ever seen.  It was full of tenderness and pity and
things I could not understand.

"Have courage!" I called as they went away.

I was never in such a fierce temper as when, after they had gone
above-stairs, I could hear one of them weeping.  D'ri stood quietly
beside me, his arms folded.

"Whut ye goin' t' dew with them air women?" he asked, turning to
the young man.

"I beg you will give me time to consider," said his Lordship,
calmly, as he lighted a cigarette.

There was a quick move in the big tower of bone and muscle beside
me.  I laid hold of D'ri's elbow and bade him stop, or I fear his
Lordship's drawing-room, his Lordship, and ourselves would
presently have had some need of repair.  Four guards who seemed to
be waiting in the hall entered hurriedly, the shackles in hand.

"No haste," said his Lordship, more pleasantly than ever.  "Stand
by and wait my orders."

"D' ye wan' t' know whut I think o' you?" said D'ri, looking down
at him, his eyes opening wide, his brow wrinkling into long furrows.

"I make a condition," said his Lordship: "do not flatter me."

"Yer jest a low-lived, mis'able, wuthless pup," said D'ri,

"Away with them!" said his Lordship, flicking the ashes off a
cigarette as he rose and walked hurriedly out of the room.




XIII

The waiting guards laid hold of us in a twinkling, and others came
crowding the doors.  They shackled our hands behind us, and covered
our eyes again.  Dark misgivings of what was to come filled me, but
I bore all in silence.  They shoved us roughly out of doors, and
there I could tell they were up to no child's play.  A loud jeer
burst from the mouths of many as we came staggering out.  I could
hear the voices of a crowd.  They hurried us into a carriage.

"We demand the prisoners!" a man shouted near me.

Then I could hear them scuffling with the guards, who, I doubt not,
were doing their best to hold them back.  In a moment I knew the
mob had possession of us and the soldiers were being hustled away.
D'ri sat shoulder to shoulder with me.  I could feel his muscles
tighten; I could hear the cracking of his joints and the grinding
of the shackle-chain.  "Judas Pr-r-i-e-st!" he grunted, straining
at the iron.  Two men leaped into the carriage.  There was a crack
of the whip, and the horses went off bounding.  We could hear
horsemen all about us and wagons following.  I had a stout heart in
me those days, but in all my life I had never taken a ride so
little to my liking.  We went over rough roads, up hill and down,
for an hour or more.

I could see in prospect no better destination than our graves, and,
indeed, I was not far wrong.  Well, by and by we came to a town
somewhere--God knows where.  I have never seen it, or known the
name of it, or even that of the prison where we were first immured.
I could tell it was a town by the rumble of the wheels and each
echoing hoof-beat.  The cavalcade was all about us, and now and
then we could hear the sound of voices far behind.  The procession
slowed up, horsemen jammed to the left of us, the carriage halted.
I could hear footsteps on a stone pavement.

"You're late," said a low voice at the carriage door.  "It's near
eleven."

"Lot o' fooling with the candidates," said one of the horsemen,
quietly.  "Everything ready?"

"Everything ready," was the answer.

The carriage door swung open.

"We get out here," said one of the men who sat with us.

I alighted.  On each side of me somebody put his hand to my
shoulder.  I could see the glow of a lantern-light close to my
face.  I knew there was a crowd of men around, but I could hear
nothing save now and then a whisper.

"Wall, Ray," said D'ri, who stood by my side, "hol' stiddy 'n'
don't be scairt."

"Do as they tell ye," a stranger whispered in my ear.  "No matter
what 't is, do as they tell ye."

They led us into a long passage and up a steep flight of wooden
stairs.  I have learned since then it was a building equipped by a
well-known secret society for its initiations.[1]  We went on
through a narrow hall and up a winding night that seemed to me
interminable.  Above it, as we stopped, the man who was leading me
rapped thrice upon a rattling wooden door.  It broke the silence
with a loud echoing noise.  I could hear then the sliding of a
panel and a faint whispering and the sound of many feet ascending
the stairs below.  The door swung open presently, and we were led
in where I could see no sign of any light.  They took me alone
across a wide bare floor, where they set me down upon some sort of
platform and left me, as I thought.  Then I could hear the
whispered challenge at the door and one after another entering and
crossing the bare floor on tiptoe.  Hundreds were coming in, it
seemed to me.  Suddenly a deep silence fell in that dark place of
evil.  The blindfold went whisking off my head as if a ghostly hand
had taken it.  But all around me was the darkness of the pit.  I
could see and I could hear nothing but a faint whisper, high above
me, like that of pine boughs moving softly in a light breeze.  I
could feel the air upon my face.  I thought I must have been moved
out of doors by some magic.  It seemed as if I were sitting under
trees alone.  Out of the black silence an icy hand fell suddenly
upon my brow.  I flinched, feeling it move slowly downward over my
shoulder.  I could hear no breathing, no rustle of garments near
me.  In that dead silence I got a feeling that the hand touching me
had no body behind it.  I was beyond the reach of fear--I was in a
way prepared for anything but the deep, heart-shaking horror that
sank under the cold, damp touch of those fingers.  They laid hold
of my elbow firmly, lifting as if to indicate that I was to rise.
I did so, moving forward passively as it drew me on.  To my
astonishment I was unable to hear my own footfall or that of my
conductor.  I thought we were walking upon soft earth.  Crossing
our path in front of me I could see, in the darkness, a gleaming
line.  We moved slowly, standing still as our toes covered it.
Then suddenly a light flashed from before and below us.  A cold
sweat came out upon me; I staggered back to strong hands that were
laid upon my shoulders, forcing me to the line again.  By that
flash of light I could see that I was standing on the very brink of
some black abyss--indeed, my toes had crossed the edge of it.  The
light came again, flickering and then settling into a steady glow.
The opening seemed to have a grassy bottom some ten feet below.  In
front of me the soil bristled, on that lower level, with some black
and pointed plant: there was at least a score of them.  As I
looked, I saw they were not plants, but a square of bayonets
thrust, points up, in the ground.  A curse came out of my hot
mouth, and then a dozen voices mocked it, going fainter, like a
dying echo.  I heard a whisper in my ear.  A tall figure in a
winding-sheet, its face covered, was leaning over me.

"To hesitate is to die," it whispered.  "Courage may save you."

Then a skeleton hand came out of the winding-sheet, pointing down
at the square of bristling bayonets.  The figure put its mouth to
my ear.

"Jump!" it whispered, and the bare bones of the dead fingers
stirred impatiently.

Some seconds of a brief silence followed.  I could hear them slowly
dripping out of eternity in the tick of a watch near me.  I felt
the stare of many eyes invisible to me.  A broad beam of bright
light shot through the gloom, resting full upon my face.  I started
back upon the strong hands behind me.  Then I felt my muscles
tighten as I began to measure the fall and to wonder if I could
clear the bayonets.  I had no doubt I was to die shortly, and it
mattered not to me how, bound as I was, so that it came soon.  For
a breath of silence my soul went up to the feet of God for help and
hope.  Then I bent my knees and leaped, I saw much as my body went
rushing through the air--an empty grave its heap of earth beside
it, an island of light, walled with candles, in a sea of gloom,
faces showing dimly in the edge of the darkness, "Thank God! I
shall clear the bayonets," I thought, and struck heavily upon a
soft mat, covered over with green turf, a little beyond that
bristling bed.  I staggered backward, falling upon it.  To my
surprise, it bent beneath me.  They were no bayonets, but only
shells of painted paper.  I got to my feet none the worse for
jumping, and as dumfounded as ever a man could be.  I stood on a
lot of broken turf with which a wide floor had been overlaid.
Boards and timbers were cut away, and the grave dug beneath them.
I saw one face among others in the gloom beyond the candle
rows--that of his Lordship.  He was coming up a little flight of
stairs to where I stood.  He moved the candles, making a small
passage, and came up to me.

"You're a brave man," said he, in that low, careless tone of his.

"And you a coward," was my answer, for the sight of him had made me
burn with anger.

"Don't commit yourself on a point like that," said he, quickly,
"for, you know, we are not well acquainted.  I like your pluck, and
I offer you what is given to few here--an explanation."

He paused, lighting a cigarette.  I stood looking at him.  The cold
politeness of manner with which he had taken my taunt, his perfect
self-mastery, filled me with wonder.  He was no callow youth, that
man, whoever he might be.  He was boring at the floor with the end
of a limber cane as he continued to address me.

"Now, look here," he went on, with a little gesture of his left
hand, between the fingers of which a cigarette was burning.  "You
are now in the temple of a patriotic society acting with no letters
patent, but in the good cause of his Most Excellent Majesty King
George III, to whom be health and happiness."

As he spoke the name he raised his hat, and a cheer came from all
sides of us.

"It is gathered this night," he continued, "to avenge the death of
Lord Ronley, a friend of his Majesty, and of many here present, and
an honored member of this order.  For his death you, and you alone,
are responsible, and, we suspect, under circumstances of no credit
to your sword.  Many of our people have been cut off from their
comrades and slain by cowardly stealth, have been led into ambush
and cruelly cut to pieces by an overwhelming number, have been shut
in prison and done to death by starvation or by stabs of a knife
there in your country.  Not content with the weapons of a soldier,
you have even resorted to the barbarity of the poison-wasp.  Pardon
me, but you Yankees do not seem to have any mercy or fairness for a
foe.  We shall give you better treatment.  You shall not be killed
like a rat in a trap.  You shall have a chance for your life.  Had
you halted, had you been a coward, you would not have been worthy
to fight in this arena.  You would not have come where you are
standing, and possibly even now your grave would have been filled.
If you survive the ordeal that is to come, I hope it will prove an
example to you of the honor that is due to bravery, of the fairness
due a foe."

Many voices spoke the word "Amen" as he stopped, turning to beckon
into the gloom about us.  I was now quite over my confusion.  I
began to look about me and get my bearings.  I could hear a stir in
the crowd beyond the lights, and a murmur of voices.   Reflecting
lanterns from many pillars near by shot their rays upon me.  I
stood on a platform, some thirty feet square, in the middle of a
large room.  Its floor was on a level with the faces of the many
who stood pressing to the row of lights, Here, I took it, I was to
fight for my life, I was looking at the yawning grave in the corner
of this arena, when four men ascended with swords and pistols.  One
of them removed the shackles, letting my hands free.  I thanked him
as he tossed them aside.  I was thinking of D'ri, and, shading my
eyes, looked off in the gloom to see if I could discover him.  I
called his name, but heard no answer.  His Lordship came over to
me, bringing a new sword.  He held the glittering blade before me,
its hilt in his right hand, its point resting on the fingers of his
left.  "It's good," said he, quietly; "try it."

It was a beautiful weapon, its guard and pommel and quillons
sparkling with wrought-silver, its grip of yellow leather laced
with blue silk.  The glow and the feel of it filled me with a joy I
had not known since my father gave me the sword of my childhood.
It drove the despair out of me, and I was a new man.  I tried the
blade, its point upon my toe.  It was good metal, and the grip
fitted me.

"Well, how do you find it?" said he, impatiently.

"I am satisfied," was my reply.

He helped me take off my blouse and waistcoat, and then I rolled my
sleeves to the elbow.  The hum of voices had grown louder.  I could
hear men offering to bet and others bantering for odds.

"We'll know soon," said a voice near me, "whether he could have
killed Ronley in a fair fight."

I turned to look at those few in the arena.  There were half a
dozen of them now, surrounding my adversary, a man taller than the
rest, with a heavy neck and brawny arms and shoulders.  He had come
out of the crowd unobserved by me.  He also was stripped to the
shirt, and had rolled up his sleeves, and was trying the steel.  He
had a red, bristling mustache and overhanging brows and a vulgar
face--not that of a man who settles his quarrel with the sword.  I
judged a club or a dagger would have been better suited to his
genius.  But, among fighters, it is easy to be fooled by a face.
In a moment the others had gone save his Lordship and that portly
bald-headed man I had heard him rebuke as "Sir Charles."  My
adversary met me at the centre of the arena, where we shook hands.
I could see, or thought I could, that he was entering upon a
business new to him, for there was in his manner an indication of
unsteady nerves.

"Gentlemen, are you ready?" said his Lordship.

But there are reasons why the story of what came after should be
none of my telling.  I leave it to other and better eyes that were
not looking between flashes of steel, as mine were.  And then one
has never a fair view of his own fights.


[1] The intrepid Fitzgibbon, the most daring leader on the Canadian
frontier those days, told me long afterward that he knew the
building--a tall frame structure on the high shore of a tributary
of the St. Lawrence.  It was built on a side of the bluff and used
originally as a depot for corn, oats, rye, and potatoes, that came
down the river in bateaux.  The slide was a slanting box through
which the sacks of grain were conveyed to sloops and schooners
below.  It did not pay and was soon abandoned, whereupon it was
rented by the secret order referred to above.  The slide bottom was
coated with lard and used for the hazing of candidates.  A prize
fight on the platform was generally a feature of the entertainment.
A man was severely injured in a leap on the bayonets, after which
that feature of the initiation was said to have been abandoned.




XIV

This is the story of Corporal Darius Olin, touching his adventure
in the Temple of the Avengers, at some unknown place in Upper
Canada, on the night of August 12, 1813, and particularly the
ordeals of the sword, the slide, and the bayonet to which Captain
Ramon Bell was subjected that night, as told to Adjutant Asarius
Church, at Sackett's Harbor, New York:--


"Soon es I see whut wus up, I gin a powerful lift on thet air
shackle-chain.  I felt 'er give 'n' bust.  A couple o' men clim'
int' the seat front uv us, 'n' the hosses started hell bent.  I sot
up with my hands 'hind uv me 'n the wagin.  I kep' 'em there tight
'n' stiff, es ef the iron wus holdin' uv 'em.  Could n't git no
chance t' say nuthin' t' Ray.  Hustled us upstairs, 'n' when we
come in t' thet air big room they tuk him one way an' me 'nother.

"Didn't hev no idee where I wus.  Felt 'em run a chain through my
arms, careful, efter they sot me down.  I sot still fer mebbe five
minutes.  Seemed so ev'rybody'd gone out o' the place.  Could n't
hear nuthin' nowhere.  I le' down the chain jest es ca-areful es I
could, 'n' tuk off the blindfold.  'Twas all dark; could n't see my
hand afore me.  Crep' 'long the floor.  See 't was covered with
sawdust.  Tuk off m' boots, 'n' got up on m' feet, 'n' walked
careful.  Did n' dast holler t' Ray.  Cal'lated when the squabble
come I 'd be ready t' dew business.  All t' once I felt a slant 'n
the floor.  'T was kind o' slip'ry, 'n' I begun t' slide.  Feet
went out from under me 'n' sot me down quick.  Tried t' ketch holt
o' suthin'.  Could n't hang on; kep' goin' faster.  Fust I knew I
'd slid int' some kind uv a box.  Let me down quicker 'n scat over
thet air grease a little ways.  I out with my tew hands 'n' bore
ag'in' the sides o' th' box powerful 'n' stopped myself.  Then I up
with these here feet o' mine.  See the top o' the box wa'n't much
more 'n a foot above me.  Tried t' crawl up ag'in.  Couldn't mek
it.  Dum thing slanted luk Tup's Hill.  Hung on awhile, cipherin'
es hard es I knew how.  Hearn suthin' go kerslap.  Seem so the hull
place trembled.  Raised up my head, 'n' peeked over my stumick down
the box.  A bar o' light stuck in away down.  Let myself go careful
till I c'u'd see my nose in it.  Then I got over on my shoulder 'n'
braced on the sides o' the box, back 'g'in' one side 'n' knees
'g'in' t'other.  See 't was a knot-hole where the light come in,
'bout es big es a man's wrist.  Peeked through, 'n' see a lot o'
lights 'n' folks, 'n' hearn 'em talkin'.  Ray he stud on a platform
facin' a big, powerful-lookin' cuss.  Hed their coats 'n' vests
off, 'n' sleeves rolled up, 'n' swords ready.  See there wus goin'
t' be a fight.  Hed t' snicker--wa'n' no way I c'u'd help it, fer,
Judas Priest!  I knew dum well they wa'n't a single one of them air
Britishers c'u'd stan' 'fore 'im.  Thet air mis'able spindlin'
devil I tol' ye 'bout--feller et hed the women--he stud back o'
Ray.  Hed his hand up luk thet.  'Fight!' he says, 'n' they got t'
work, 'n' the crowd begun t' jam up 'n' holler.  The big feller he
come et Ray es ef he wus goin' t' cut him in tew.  Ray he tuk it
easy 'n' rassled the sword of the big chap round 'n' round es ef it
wus tied t' hisn.  Fust I knew he med a quick lunge 'n' pricked 'im
'n the arm.  Big chap wus a leetle shy then.  Did n't come up t'
the scratch es smart 'n' sassy es he'd orter.  Ray he went efter
'im hammer 'n' tongs.  Thet air long slim waist o' hisn swayed 'n'
bent luk a stalk o' barley.  He did luk joemightyful han'some--wish
't ye c'u'd 'a' seen 'im thet air night.  Hair wus jest es shiny es
gold 'n the light o' them candles.  He 'd feint, an' t' other 'd
dodge.  Judas Priest! seemed so he put the p'int o' the sword all
over thet air big cuss.  C'u'd 'a' killed 'im a dozen times, but I
see he did n't want t' dew it.  Kep' prickin' 'im ev'ry lunge 'n'
druv 'im off the boards--tumbled 'im head over heels int' the
crowd.  Them air devils threw up their hats 'n' stomped 'n'
hollered powerful, es ef 't were mighty fun t' see a man cut t'
pieces.  Wall, they tuk up another man, quicker 'n the fust, but he
wa'n' nowhere near s' big 'n' cordy.  Wa'n't only one crack o' the
swords in thet air fight.  Could n't hardly say Jack Robinson 'fore
the cuss hed fell.  Ray hurt him bad, I guess, for they hed t' pick
'im up 'n' carry 'im off luk a baby.  Guess the boy see 't he hed a
good many to lick, 'n' hed n't better waste no power a-foolin'.
All t' once thet air low-lived, spindlin', mis'able devil he come
t' the edge o' the platform 'n' helt up his hand.  Soon 's they
stopped yellin' he says; 'Gentlemen,' he says, 'sorry t' tell ye
thet the man fer the next bout hes got away.  We left him securely
fastened up 'n the fust chamber.  Have hed the building searched,
but ain't able t' find him.  He must hev gone down the slide.  I am
sorry to say we hev no more Yankees.  If this man fights any more
it will hev t' be a Britisher thet goes ag'in' 'im.   Is there a
volunteer?'

"Ray he runs up 'n' says suthin' right 'n his ear.  Could n't hear
whut 'twus.   Did n' set well.  T' other feller he flew mad, 'n'
Ray he fetched 'im a cuff, luk thet, with the back uv his hand.  Ye
see, he did n' know he hed been a-fightin' Yankees, 'n' he did n'
like the idee.  'Gentlemen,' says he, 'I 'll fight anybody, but ef
this chap ain't a coward, he 'll fight me himself.' T'other feller
he off with his coat 'n' vest es quick es a flash 'n' picked up a
sword.  'Fight, then, ye cub!' says he; an' they flew at each other
hell bent fer 'lection.  He wa'n' no fool with a sword, nuther, I
can tell ye, thet air spindlin' cuss.  I see Ray hed his han's
full.  But he wus jest es cool es a green cowcumber, eggzac'ly.
Kep' a-cuffin' t' other sword, 'n' let 'im hit 'n' lunge 'n' feint
es much es he pleased.  See he wus jest a-gettin' his measure, 'n'
I knew suthin' wus goin' t' happen purty quick.  Fust I knew he
ketched Ray by the shirtsleeve with the p'int uv 'is sword 'n'
ripped it t' the collar.  Scairt me so I bit my tongue watchin' uv
'em.  They got locked, 'n' both swords came up t' the hilts
t'gether with a swish 'n' a bang luk thet.  The blades clung, 'n'
they backed off.  Then Ray he begun t' feint 'n' lunge 'n' hustle
'im.  Quicker 'n scat he gin 'im an awful prick 'n the shoulder.  I
c'u'd see the blood come, but they kep' a-goin' back 'n' forth 'n'
up 'n' down desperit.  The red streak on thet air feller's shirt
kep' a-growin'.  Purty quick one side uv 'im wus red an' t' other
white.    See he wus gettin' weaker 'n' weaker.  Ray c'u'd 'a'
split 'im t' the navel ef he'd only hed a min' tew.  All t' once he
med a jab at Ray, 'n' threw up 'is han's, 'n' went back a step er
tew, luk a boss with th' blin' staggers, 'n' tumbled head over
heels in thet air open grave.  There wus hell t' pay fer a minute.
Lot on 'em clim' over the row o' lights, yellin' luk wildcats, 'n'
hauled thet air mis'able cuss out o' the grave, 'n' stud 'im up,
'n' gin 'im a drink o' liquor.  In half a minute he up with his
han'kerchief 'n' waved it over 'is head t' mek 'em keep still.
Soon 's they wus quiet he up 'n' he says: 'Gentlemen,' says he,
'this 'ere chap hes stood the test o' the sword.  Are ye
satisfied?'  'We are,' says they--ev'ry British son uv a gun they
wus there up 'n' hollered, 'Then,' says he, 'giv' 'im th' slide.'

"Ray he put down 'is sword 'n' picked up 'is coat 'n' vest.  Then
they grabbed th' lights, 'n' thet 's th' last I see on' em there.
Purty quick 'twus all dark.  Hearn 'em comin' upstairs 'n goin'
'cross th' floor over my head.  'Gun t' think o' myself a leetle
bit then.  Knowed I was in thet air slide, an' hed t' le' go purty
quick.  Hed n't no idee where it went tew, but I cal'lated I wus
middlin' sure t' know 'fore long.  Knowed when I le' go I wus goin'
t' dew some tall slippin' over thet air greased bottom.  See a
light come down th' box 'n a minute.  Hearn somebody speakin' there
et the upper end.

"'This 'ere's th' las' test o' yer courage,' says a man, says he;
'few comes here alive 'n' sound es you be.  Ye wus a doomed man.
Ye 'd hev been shot at daylight, but we gin ye a chance fer yer
life.  So fur ye 've proved yerself wuthy.  Ef ye hold yer courage,
ye may yit live.  Ef ye flinch, ye 'll land in heaven.  Ef yer life
is spared, remember how we honor courage.'

"Then they gin 'im a shove, 'n' I hearn 'im a-comin'.  I flopped
over 'n' le' go.  Shot away luk a streak o' lightnin'.   Dum thing
grew steeper 'n' steeper.  Jes' hel' up my ban's 'n' let 'er go
lickitty split.  Jerushy Jane Pepper! jes'

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