nor his wealth could save him
from the result of his offenses against the laws of man and God. He was
made desperate by these thoughts.

He could see from his uncomfortable position the company of scouts busy
with their supper. The ordinary observer would not have imagined that
these men were the pioneers of two hundred and thirty Green Mountain
Boys and the Massachusetts and Connecticut troops. But Halpen knew the
army of Americans was coming, and the object of their approach.
Unwarned, Captain De la Place and his garrison might be surprised and
overwhelmed by these backwoodsmen. Halpen had no particular love for the
King, nor for the royal government; but he hated these men who had
defended their farms for so many years from the aggressions of his own
party. Fear of punishment was reinforced by a desire to worst the Green
Mountain Boys. He began to struggle against his bonds.

He had done that early in the day when he was first fastened to the
tree; and the thongs had cut into his arms and breast. But now he felt
these abrasions not at all. He was mad to be free, and free he would be!
The scouts paid him no attention. The sun was set and the forest grew
dark. Would he escape he must accomplish the matter soon, or likely
Bolderwood or young Harding would come to examine him again, and then
the chance would be past.

At last, his flesh cut so deeply that blood ran from arms and body, he
stretched the hide rope until he was able to wriggle out of it. There
were then his ankles to untie. This he did in a very few moments. He was
free! Rising to his knees, his limbs were so paralyzed by inaction that
he could not yet stand upright, he crept into the brush and, like the
serpent that Bolderwood declared to be his prototype, glided away from
the camp and down toward the brush-bordered shore of the lake.

CHAPTER XXII

THE END OF SIMON HALPEN

As they are to-day, the surroundings of Fort Ticonderoga were most
picturesque. Nor is the country about the fortifications, and across the
lake where the camp of Bolderwood's scouts was established at the time
of our story, and later where the Grenadier Battery was raised, much
more thickly settled to-day than it was then. Mt. Defiance, south of the
Lake George outlet on the west side of Champlain was a heavily wooded
eminence. Behind the scouts' camp a rugged shoulder of ground, later
called Mount Independence, raised its bulk out of the surrounding
forest. The formidab