t, to live
where history was being made.

The pastor had clothed me in his mind with ministerial gown and band,
and the martial blood that quickened he counted an Iroquois strain. Yet
so inconsistent is human nature, so given to forms which it calls
creeds, that when I afterwards put on the surplice and read prayers to
my adopted people, he counted it as great a defection as taking to
saddle and spur. We cannot leave the expression of our lives to those
better qualified than we are, however dear they may be. I had to pack my
saddlebags and be gone, loving Longmeadow none the less because I
grieved it, knowing that it would not approve of me more if I stayed and
failed to do my natural part.

The snuffbox and the missal which had belonged to my family in France I
always carried with me. And very little could be transported on the road
we took.

John Williams, who came to Longmeadow in deerskins, and paraded his
burnished red poll among the hatted Williamses, abetted me in turning
from the missionary field to the arena of war, and never left me. It was
Skenedonk who served the United States with brawn and endurance, while I
put such policy and color into my harangues as I could command. We
shared our meals, our camps, our beds of leaves together. The life at
Longmeadow had knit me to good use. I could fast or feast, ride or
march, take the buckskins, or the soldier's uniform.

Of this service I shall write down only what goes to the making of the
story. The Government was pleased to commend it, and it may be found
written in other annals than mine.

Great latitude was permitted us in our orders. We spent a year in the
north. My skin darkened and toughened under exposure until I said to
Skenedonk, "I am turning an Indian;" and he, jealous of my French blood,
denied it.

In July we had to thread trails he knew by the lake toward Sandusky.
There was no horse path wide enough for us to ride abreast. Brush
swished along our legs, and green walls shut our view on each side. The
land dipped towards its basin. Buckeye and gigantic chestnut trees,
maple and oak, passed us from rank to rank of endless forest. Skenedonk
rode ahead, watching for every sign and change, as a pilot now watches
the shifting of the current. So we had done all day, and so we were
doing when fading light warned us to camp.

A voice literally cried out of the wilderness, startling the horses and
ringing among the tree trunks:

"The spirit of the L