"Well, what did they do last year? Nothing at all, but lose Oswego. Lord Loudun, and Abercrombie, and Webb, marched and countermarched, and consulted, and played the fool, while bloody Montcalm was besieging Mercer, taking Oswego, breaking the terms he had expressly granted, and suffering his Ingians to scalp and torture his prisoners of war before his eyes. Well, this was just about the middle of August; but it was judged too late to do anything more, and nothing was done. There was merry work in Albany, and people danced and sang; but the Ingians got a strange notion that the English lion was better at roaring than he was at biting.
"And now, major, what have we done this year to make up for all the blunders of the last five or six? Why, Lord Loudun stripped the whole of this province of its men and guns, to go to Halifax and attack Louisburg. When he got to Halifax, he exercised his men for a month, heard a false report that Louisburg was too strong and too well prepared to be taken, and sailed back to New York. In the meanwhile, Montcalm took Fort William Henry on Lake George, and, as usual, let the garrison be butchered by his Ingians.
"So, now the redskins see that the English arms are contemptible on every part of this continent, and the French complete masters of the lakes and the whole western country. The Five Nations see their long house open to our enemies on three sides, and not a step taken to give them assistance or protection. We have abandoned them. Can you expect them not to abandon us?"
The young officer, long before this painful question was asked, had leaned his elbows on the table, and covered his eyes and part of his face with his hand. Walter and Edith both gazed at him earnestly, while their father bent his eyes gloomily down on the table, all three knowing and sympathizing with the feelings of a British officer while listening to such a detail. The expression of his countenance they could not see; but the finely-cut ear, appearing from beneath the curls of his hair, glowed like fire before the speaker finished.
He did not answer, however, for more than a minute; but then, raising his head, with a look of stern gravity, he replied,--
"I cannot expect it. I cannot even understand how they have remained attached to us so long and so much."
"The influence of one man has done a great deal," replied Mr. Prevost. "Sir William Johnson is what is called the Indian agent; and, whatever may be thought of his military abilities, there can be no doubt that the Iroquois trust him, and love him more than they have ever trusted or loved a white man before. He is invariably just towards them, always keeps his word with them; he never yields to importunity or refuses to listen to reason; and he places that implicit confidence in them which enlists everything that is noble in the Indian character in his favour. Thus, in his presence, and in their dealings with him, they are quite a different people from what they are with others--all their fine qualities are brought into action, and all their wild passions are stilled."
"I should like to see them as they really are," exclaimed the young officer, eagerly. And then, turning to Woodchuck, he said--"You tell me you are going amongst them, my friend; can you not take me with you?"
"Wait three days and I will," replied the other. "I am first going up the Mohawk, as I told you, close by Sir William's castle and hall, as he calls the places. You'd see little there; but, if you will promise to do just as I tell you, and mind advice, I'll take you up to Sandy Hill and the creek, where you'll see enough of them. That will be arter I come back on Friday about noon."
Mr. Prevost looked at the young officer, and he at his entertainer; and then the former said--
"When will you bring him back, captain? He must be here again by next Tuesday night."
"That he shall be, with or without his scalp," answered Woodchuck, with a laugh. "You get him ready to go; for you know, Prevost, the forest is not the parade-ground."
"I will lend him my Gakaah and Gischa and Gostoweh," cried Walter. "We will make him quite an Indian."
"No, no!" answered Woodchuck, "that won't do, Walter. The man who tries to please an Ingian by acting like an Ingian makes naught of it. They know it's a cheat, and they don't like it. We have our ways, and they have theirs; and let each keep their own, like honest men. So I think, and so the Ingians think. Putting on a lion's skin will never make a man a lion. Get the major some good tough leggins, and a coat that won't tear; a rifle and an axe and a wood-knife--a bottle of brandy is no bad thing. But don't forget a calumet and a pouch of tobacco, for both may be needful. So now good-bye to ye all. I must trot."
Thus saying, he rose from the table, and, without more ceremonious adieu, left the room.
CHAPTER VI.
"How sweet she looks!" exclaimed a man of nearly my own age--a man most distinguished in his own land--as we gazed on a young and lovely girl, near and dear to us both as our own child--soon to become my child-in-law as she already is in affection. "How sweet she looks!"
The words set me thinking. What was it in which that sweetness consisted? Sweetness as of the song of a bird, or the ambrosial breathing of a flower--sweetness as of an entrancing melody, which had its solemn sadness as well as its delight--sweetness which carried the soul on its wings of perfume into the far future, to gather in the land of dreams, with the trembling awe of fear-touched hope, the mystic signs of her future destiny. It consisted not in the lovely lines of the features, in the exquisite hues of the complexion, in the beautiful symmetry of the form. But it consisted in that nameless, unphonetic, but ever lucid, hieroglyph of the heart--expression--expression in form as well as in face--in tranquillity as well as in movement--in the undefined and undefinable beauty of beauties--grace.
"La grace encore plus belle que la beauté."
Grace which no art can ever attain, though it may imitate. Grace which is the gift of God to the body, to the mind, to the spirit. Grace which, in our pristine state, was, doubtless, common to all the three, blending taste, and reason, and religion in one harmony almost divine--breathing forth from the earthly form in the image of its Maker, and which lingers yet, and breathes forth still, in the pure and the innocent and the bright.
Such grace was in Edith Prevost; and hard or preoccupied must have been the heart that could resist it. She was certainly very beautiful, too, and of that beauty the most attractive. Though so young, her fully-developed form left maturity but little to add; and every swelling line flowed into the other with symmetry the most perfect. The rich, warm, glossy curls of her nut-brown hair, unstained and unrestrained by any of the frightful conceits of the day, wantoned round her ivory forehead in lines all in harmony with her figure and her features, and in hue contrasting, yet harmonizing, with her complexion, in its soft, rich warmth; fair, yet glowing with a hardly perceptible shade of brown, such as that which distinguishes the Parian marble from the stone of Carrara. Then her liquid, hazel eyes, full of ever-varied expression--now sparkling with gay, free joy, now full of tender light (especially when they turned upon her father), and now shaded with a sleepy sort of thoughtfulness, when one of her day-dreams fell upon her. There was something, moreover, in her manner--in her whole demeanour--which lent another charm to beauty, and added grace to grace. Yet it was of a kind difficult to define. I cannot describe it; I can only tell how she came by it.
I have shown that, in early years, she had been educated in a land where civilization and refinement were carried to their highest point; but it is necessary to add, that her education there had been conducted in the midst of the most refined society of that land, and by those in whom refinement had been a quality