nt on leaving here before to-morrow."

"What do they want of the colonel?"

"I don't know; but they are stopping at his house."

"I ain't sayin' but that the colonel is as good a soldier as you'll find
around here; but bless your soul, lad, though it ain't for me to say it,
he could learn considerable from Corporal 'Lige if he was to spend a few
hours every now and then listenin'."

"But tell me all you can about Ticonderoga, corporal."

The old man looked around furtively as if half-expecting the committee
from Connecticut, or Colonel Easton, might be coming to ask his advice
on some disputed point, and then, shaking his forefinger now and again
at the lad much as though to prevent contradiction, he began:

"In the first place the folks 'round here call it 'Ticonderoga' when it
ain't anything of the kind. The real name is 'Cheonderoga,' which is
Iroquois lingo for 'Sounding Water,' being called so, I allow, because
the falls at Lake George make a deal of noise. The French built
breastworks there in '55, which they christened Fort Carillon. Now you
see it's a mighty strong place owin' to the situation, and its bein'
located on a point which, so I've heard said, rises more'n a hundred
feet above the level of the water. The solid part of it--that is to say,
the land--is only about five hundred acres. Three sides are surrounded
by water, an' in the rear is a swamp. That much for the advantages of
the spot, so to speak. Now I was there in July of '58 when Montcalm held
the fort with four thousand men. Lord Howe was second in command of
General Abercrombie's forces, and Major Putnam, down here, was with the
crowd. That's when the major wouldn't let his lordship go into the
battle first; but banged right along ahead until we come to the first
breastworks, finding it so strong that the troops were marched back to
the landin' place and went into bivouac for the night. It was the sixth
day of July; on the eighth we tried it again; but the fort couldn't be
carried, an' the blood that was shed there, lad, all under the British
flag, would come pretty nigh drownin' every man, woman an' child in this
'ere settlement. On the twenty-sixth of July in the year 1759, General
Amherst with eleven thousand men scared the French out; they didn't fire
a gun, but abandoned the fortification and fled to Crown Point. Since
that time the king's forces have held it."

"How many are there now?" Isaac asked, not so much for the purpose of
gai