ildren rambled beneath the little dormer windows of the Acadian
cottages, and the voices of the boys at play in the apple orchards
shouted in an alien tongue. The very names of the places had vanished.
Beausejour was now Cumberland. Beaubassin had become Amherst.
Cobequid was now Truro. Grand Pre was now known as Horton. The
heart-broken people hurried on like ghosts to the unoccupied lands of
St. Mary's Bay,--St. Mary's Bay, where long ago Priest Aubry had been
lost. Here they settled, to hew out for themselves a second home in
the wilderness.

{237} It will be recalled that Braddock's plans had been captured by
the French, and those plans told Baron Dieskau, who had come out to
command the French troops, that the English under William Johnson, a
great leader of the Iroquois, inured to bush life like an Indian, were
to attack the French fort at Crown Point on Lake Champlain. Now
observe: on the Ohio, Braddock the regular had been defeated; in
Acadia, Lawrence and Monckton and Murray, the English generals, had
brought infamy across England's renown by their failure to understand
colonial conditions. At Lake Champlain the conditions are reversed.
Johnson, the English leader, is, from long residence in America, almost
a colonial. Dieskau, the commander of the French, is a veteran of
Saxon wars, but knows nothing of bushfighting. What happens?

[Illustration: MAP OF ACADIA AND THE ADJACENT ISLANDS, 1755]

Dieskau had intended to attack the English at Oswego, but the plans for
Johnson on Lake Champlain brought the commander of the French rushing
up the Richelieu River with three thousand soldiers, part regulars,
part Canadians. Crown Point--called Fort Frederick by the French--was
reached in August. No English are here, but scouts bring word that
Johnson has built a fort on the south end of Lake George, and, leaving
only five hundred men to garrison it, is moving up the lake with his
main troops.

{238}

[Illustration: SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON]

Fired by the French victories over Braddock, Dieskau planned to capture
the English fort and ambush Johnson on the march. Look at the map!
The south end of Lake Champlain lies parallel with the north end of
Lake George. The French can advance on the English one of two
ways,--portage over to Lake George and canoe up the lake to Johnson's
fort, or ascend the marsh to the south of Lake Champlain, then cross
through the woods to Johnson's fort. Dieskau chose the latter t