r birth, on board a packet-sloop that should carry them to
their new house. Having thus made provision for the welfare of his
dear ones, the lonely man proceeded to fulfil the destiny he had
planned by joining as a volunteer aid the army which, under General
Johnson, was charged with the capture of Crown Point on Lake Champlain.
In this campaign it was largely owing to Major Hester's soldierly
knowledge and tactical skill that the French army, under Baron Dieskau,
which had advanced as far as the southern end of Lake George, was
defeated. For this victory Sir William Johnson was raised to a
baronetcy and presented with a purse of five thousand pounds.

Through the war Major Hester fought with one army or another, always in
the forefront of battle, as he was a leader in council; but never
finding the boon of death which he craved. At length he stood with
Wolfe on the lofty Plain of Abraham, and in the fall of Quebec
witnessed the fatal blow to French power in America. In all this time
he had never returned to the forest house that he had last looked upon
in company with his beloved wife. Whether his resolution not to visit
it would have lived to the end can never be known, for in the second
year of the war a marauding party from an army, which, under Montcalm,
had just captured and destroyed Oswego, reached Tawtry House and burned
it to the ground.

After the surrender of Canada, Major Hester visited his children in New
York City. Here he found his boy, grown almost beyond recognition,
domiciled in the new King's College building, then just completed, and
doing well in his studies, but keenly regretting that the war was ended
without his participation. The white-haired soldier also found his
daughter, Edith, now fifteen years of age, budding into a beautiful
womanhood, and bearing so strong a resemblance to her mother that he
gazed at her with mixed emotions of pain and delight.

During his stay in the city, the major was frequently consulted upon
military affairs by the English commander-in-chief, Sir Jeffry Amherst,
who finally begged him to accompany the expedition which he was about
to send into the far west, under the redoubtable Colonel Rogers, of
ranger fame, to receive the surrender of the more distant French posts.

"Rogers is impetuous, and needs a man of your experience to serve as a
balance-wheel," said Sir Jeffry. "Besides, I want some one of your
ability and knowledge of Indian affairs to take co