s the encumbered tract just
beneath and around the rampart, looked at Pringle and said:

"How do you think a bayonet charge is to be rushed over such ground
as that? And what good will our musketry fire be against those
tough wooden walls, directed upon a foe we cannot see, but who can
pick us off in security from behind their breastwork? For let me
tell you that there is great skill shown in its construction. On
the inside, I doubt not, they can approach close to their
loopholes, which you can detect all along, and take easy aim at us;
but on this side it is bristling with pointed stakes, twisted
boughs, and treetops so arranged as to baffle and hinder any
attempt at assault. As I told your General, his cannon could
shatter it in a few hours, if he would but bring them to bear. But
a rampart like that is practically bayonet and musket proof. It
will prove impregnable to assault."

Pringle and Roche exchanged glances. They had seen something of
fighting before this, but never warfare so strange.

"Would that Lord Howe were living!" exclaimed the younger officer.
"He would have heard reason; he would have been advised. But the
General--"

He paused, and a meaning gesture concluded the sentence. It was not
for them to speak against their commander; but he inspired no
confidence in his men, and it was plainly seen that he was about to
take a very ill-judged step.

It is the soldier's fate that he must not rebel or remonstrate or
argue; his duty is to obey orders and leave the rest. But that
night, as the army slept in the camp round the deserted sawmills,
there were many whose eyes never closed in slumber. Fritz saw the
veteran Campbell sitting in the moonlight, looking straight before
him with wide, unseeing eyes; and when the grey light of day broke
over the forest, his face was shadowed, as it seemed, by the
approach of death.

"I shall never see another sunrise," he said to Fritz, as the
latter walked up to him; "my span of life will be cut through here
at Ticonderoga."

Fritz made no reply. It seemed to him that many lives would be cut
short upon this fateful day. He wondered whether he should live to
see the shades of evening fall. He had no thought of quailing or
drawing back. He had cast in his lot with the army, and he meant to
fight his very best that day; but he realized the hopelessness of
the contest before them, and although, if the General could only be
aroused in time to a sense of his own blunde