you drinking his
Majesty's health in Fort Carillon. Why not? You carry Howe,
and who carries Howe carries the eagles on his standards; or so
you announce in your last. Well, but have we, on our part, no
_vexillum?_ Brother Romulus presents his compliments to Brother
Remus, and begs leave to answer 'Wolfe!' 'Tis scarce
forty-eight hours since Wry-necked Dick brought his ships into
harbour with the Brigadier on board, and already I have seen him
and--what is more--fallen in love. 'What like is he?' says you.
'Just a sandy-haired slip of a man,' says I, 'with a cock nose':
but I love him, Jack, for he knows his business. We've a
professional at last. No more Pall Mall promenaders--no more
Braddocks. Loudons, Webbs! We live in the consulship of Pitt,
my lad--_deprome Caecubum_--we'll tap a cask to it in Quebec.
And if Abercromby's your Caesar--"

Here a bugle sounded, and Ensign John a Cleeve of the 46th Regiment
of Foot (Murray's) crushed his friend's letter into his pocket and
sprang off the woodpile where he had seated himself with the
regimental colours across his knees. He unfolded them from their
staff, assured himself that they hung becomingly--gilt tassels and
yellow silken folds--and stepped down to the lake-side where the
bateaux waited.

The scene is known to-day for one of the fairest in the world.
Populous cities lie near it and pour their holiday-makers upon it
through the summer season. Trains whistle along the shore under its
forests; pleasure-steamers, with music on their decks, shoot across
bays churned of old by the paddles of war-canoes; from wildernesses
where Indians lurked in ambush smile neat hotels, white-walled, with
green shutters and deep verandas; and lovers, wandering among the
hemlocks, happen on a clearing with a few turfed mounds, and seat
themselves on these last ruins of an ancient fort, nor care to
remember even its name. Behind them--behind the Adirondacks and the
Green Mountains--and pushed but a little way back in these hundred
and fifty years, lies the primeval forest, trodden no longer now by
the wasting redman, but untamed yet, almost unhandselled. And still,
as the holidaymakers leave it, winter closes down on the lake-side
and wraps it in silence, broken by the loon's cry or the crash of a
snow-laden tree deep in the forest--the same sounds, the same aching
silence, endured by French and English