which somebody told us led
to the Fort, from which the village, Fort Edward, takes its name. But,
instead of a fort, the lane ran full tilt against a pair of bars.

"Now we are lost," I said, sententiously.

"A gem of countless price," pursued Halicarnassus, who never quotes poetry
except to inflame me.

"How long will it be profitable to remain here?" 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 woods came shriek 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 half-naked Indian, and two unnatural-looking hands
raised in entreaty. It was interesting as a picture, but it excited no
pity, no horr