st Rolf and Quonab reported to General Macomb. There was
little doing but preparations for the winter. There were no prospects of
further trouble from their neighbours in the north. Most of the militia
were already disbanded, and the two returned to Plattsburg, only to
receive their honourable discharge, to be presented each with the medal
of war, with an extra clasp on Rolf's for that dauntless dash that
spiked the British guns.

Wicked war with its wickedness was done at last. "The greatest evil that
can befall a country," some call it, and yet out of this end came three
great goods: The interstate distrust had died away, for now they were
soldiers who had camped together, who had "drunk from the same canteen";
little Canada, until then a thing of shreds and scraps, had been fused
in the furnace, welded into a young nation, already capable of defending
her own. England, arrogant with long success at sea, was taught a lesson
of courtesy and justice, for now the foe whom she had despised and
insulted had shown himself her equal, a king of the sea-king stock. The
unnecessary battle of New Orleans, fought two weeks after the war was
officially closed, showed that the raw riflemen of Tennessee were
more than a match for the seasoned veterans who had overcome the great
Napoleon, and thus on land redeemed the Stars and Stripes.

The war brought unmeasured material loss on all concerned, but some
weighty lasting gains to two at least. On December 24, 1814, the Treaty
of Ghent was signed and the long rides were hung up on the cabin walls.
Nothing was said in the treaty about the cause of war--the right of
search. Why should they speak of it? If a big boy bullies a smaller one
and gets an unexpected knockdown blow, it is not necessary to have it
all set forth in terms before they shake hands that "I, John, of the
first part, to wit, the bully, do hereby agree, promise, and contract to
refrain in future forevermore from bullying you, Jonathan, of the second
part, to wit, the bullied." That point had already been settled by the
logic of events. The right of search was dead before the peace was born,
and the very place of its bones is forgotten to-day.

Rolf with Quonab returned to the trapping that winter; and as soon as
the springtime came and seeding was over, he and Van Trumper made their
choice of farms. Every dollar they could raise was invested in the
beautiful sloping lands of the upper Hudson. Rolf urged the largest
pos