asked Grande, when we
had sat immovable and speechless for the space of five minutes.

"There seems to be nowhere else to go. We have got to the end," said
Halicarnassus, roaming as to his eyes over into the wheat-field beyond.

"We might turn," suggested the Anakim, looking bright.

"How can you turn a horse in this knitting-needle of a lane?" I
demanded.

"I don't know," replied Halicarnassus, dubiously, "unless I take him up
in my arms, and set him down with his head the other way,"--and
immediately turned him deftly in a corner about half as large as the
wagon.

The next lane we came to was the right one, and being narrow, rocky,
and rough, we left our carriage and walked.

A whole volume of the peaceful and prosperous history of our beloved
country could be read in the fact that the once belligerent,
life-saving, death-dealing fort was represented by a hen-coop; yet I
was disappointed. I was hungry for a ruin,--some visible hint of the
past. Such is human nature,--ever prone to be more impressed by a
disappointment of its own momentary gratification than by the most
obvious well-being of a nation but, glad or sorry, of Fort Edward was
not left one stone upon another. Several single stones lay about,
promiscuous rather than belligerent. Flag-staff and palisades lived
only in a few straggling bean-poles. For the heavy booming of cannon
rose the "quauk!" of ducks and the cackling of hens. We went to the
spot which tradition points out as the place where Jane McCrea met her
death. River flowed, and raftsmen sang below; women stood at their
washing-tubs, and white-headed children stared at us from above; nor
from the unheeding river or the forgetful weeds came or cry or faintest
wail of pain.

When we were little, and geography and history were but printed words
on white paper, not places and events, Jane McCrea was to us no
suffering woman, but a picture of a low-necked, long-skirted, scanty
dress, long hair grasped by a naked Indian, and two unnatural-looking
hands raised in entreaty. It was interesting as a picture, but it
excited no pity, no horror, because it was only a picture. We never
saw women dressed in that style. We knew that women did not take
journeys through woods without bonnet or shawl, and we spread a veil of
ignorant, indifferent incredulity over the whole. But as we grow up,
printed words take on new life. The latent fire in them lights up and
glows. The mystic words throb with