now
what an English General will do--or what his soldiers won't.
Pile the trees higher, my braves--more than breast-high--
mountain-high if time serves! But this Abercromby comes from a land
where the bees fly tail-foremost by rule."

"With all submission, I would still recommend Crown Point."

"Should he, by chance, think of planting a gun yonder, I feel sure
that notion will exclude all others. We shall open the door and
retreat on Crown Point unmolested."

Bourlamaque drew in a long breath and emitted it in a mighty _pouf_!

"I am not conducting his campaign for him," said his superior calmly.
"God forbid! I once imagined myself in his predecessor's place, the
Earl of Loudon's, and within twenty minutes France had lost Canada.
I shudder at it still!"

Bourlamaque laughed. Montcalm had said it with a whimsical smile,
and it passed him unheeded that the smile ended in a contracting of
the brows and a bitter little sigh. The fighter judged war by its
victories; the strategist by their effects. Montcalm could win
victories; even now, by putting himself into what might pass for his
adversary's mind, he hoped to snatch a success against odds.
But what avails it to administer drubbings which but leave your foe
the more stubbornly aggressive? British Generals blundered; but
always the British armies came on. War had been declared three
years ago; actually it had lasted for four; and the sum of its
results was that France, with her chain of forts planted for
aggression from the St. Lawrence to the Ohio, had turned to defending
them. His countrymen might throw up their caps over splendid
repulses of the foe, and hail such for triumphs; but Montcalm looked
beneath the laurels.

The British, having slept the night in the woods, were mustered at
dawn and marched back to the landing-place. Their General, falling
back upon common sense after the loss of a precious day, was now
resolved to try the short and beaten path by which Montcalm had
retreated. It formed a four-mile chord, with the loop of the river
for arc, and presented no real difficulty except the broken bridge,
which Bradstreet was sent forward to repair.

But though beaten and easy to follow, the road was rough; and
Abercromby--in a sweating hurry now--determined to leave his guns
behind. John a Cleeve, passing forward with his regiment, took
note of them as they lay unlimbered amid the brushwood by the
landing-stage, and thought little of it. He