Chapter 8

A land of love, and a land of light,
Withouten sun, or moon, or night:
Where the river swa'd a living stream,
And the light a pure celestial beam:
The land of vision, it would seem
A still, an everlasting dream.
_Queen's Wake._

The rest that succeeds fatigue, and which attends a newly awakened
sense of security, is generally sweet and deep. Such was the fact
with Mabel, who did not rise from her humble pallet -- such a bed
as a sergeant's daughter might claim in a remote frontier post --
until long after the garrison had obeyed the usual summons of the
drums, and had assembled at the morning parade. Sergeant Dunham,
on whose shoulders fell the task of attending to these ordinary
and daily duties, had got through all his morning avocations, and
was beginning to think of his breakfast, before his child left her
room, and came into the fresh air, equally bewildered, delighted,
and grateful, at the novelty and security of her new situation.

At the time of which we are writing, Oswego was one of the extreme
frontier posts of the British possessions on this continent. It
had not been long occupied, and was garrisoned by a battalion of
a regiment which had been originally Scotch, but into which many
Americans had been received since its arrival in this country; all
innovation that had led the way to Mabel's father filling the humble
but responsible situation of the oldest sergeant. A few young
officers also, who were natives of the colonies, were to be found
in the corps. The fort itself, like most works of that character,
was better adapted to resist an attack of savages than to withstand
a regular siege; but the great difficulty of transporting heavy
artillery and other necessaries rendered the occurrence of the latter
a probability so remote as scarcely to enter into the estimate of
the engineers who had planned the defences. There were bastions
of earth and logs, a dry ditch, a stockade, a parade of considerable
extent, and barracks of logs, that answered the double purpose of
dwellings and fortifications. A few light field-pieces stood in
the area of the fort, ready to be conveyed to any point where they
might be wanted, and one or two heavy iron guns looked out from
the summits of the advanced angles, as so many admonitions to the
audacious to respect their power.

When Mabel, quitting the convenient, but comparatively retired hut
where her father had been permitted to place her, issued into the
pure air of the morning, she found herself at the foot of a bastion,
which lay invitingly before her, with a promise of giving a _coup
d'oeil_ of all that had been concealed in the darkness of the
preceding night. Tripping up the grassy ascent, the light-hearted
as well as