nch and Indian army began its march early the next morning, and Robert
found himself with about a dozen other prisoners, settlers who had been
swept up in its advance. They had been surprised in their cabins, or their
fields, newly cleared, and could tell him nothing, but he noticed that the
march was west.

He believed they were not far from Lake Ontario, and he had no doubt that
Montcalm had prepared some fell stroke. His mind settled at last upon
Oswego, where the Anglo-American forces had a post supposed to be strong,
and he was smitten with a fierce and commanding desire to escape and take a
warning. But he was compelled to eat his heart out without result. With
French and Indians all about him he had not the remotest chance and,
helpless, he was compelled to watch the Marquis de Montcalm march to what
he felt was going to be a French triumph.

Swarms of Indian scouts and skirmishers preceded the army and Canadian
axmen cut a way for the artillery, but to Robert's great amazement these
operations lasted only a short time. Almost before he could realize it they
had emerged from the deep woods and he looked again upon the vast, shining
reaches of Lake Ontario. Then he learned for the first time that Montcalm's
army had come mostly in boats and in detachments, and was now united for
attack. As he had surmised, Oswego, which the English and Americans had
intended to be a great stronghold and rallying place in the west, was the
menaced position.

Robert from a hill saw three forts before the French force, the largest
standing upon a plateau of considerable elevation on the east bank of the
river, which there flowed into the lake. It was shaped like a star, and the
fortifications consisted of trunks of trees, sharpened at the ends, driven
deep into the ground, and set as close together as possible. On the west
side of the river was another fort of stone and clay, and four hundred
yards beyond it was an unfinished stockade, so weak that its own garrison
had named it in derision Rascal Fort. Some flat boats and canoes lay in the
lake, and it was a man in one of these canoes who had been the first to
learn of the approach of Montcalm's army, so slender had been the
precautions taken by the officers in command of the forts.

"We have come upon them almost as if we had dropped from the clouds," said
Langlade, exultingly, to Robert. "When they thought the Marquis de Montcalm
was in Montreal, lo! he was here! It is the French