Chapter 11

Compel the hawke to sit that is unmann'd,
Or make the hound, untaught, to draw the deere,
Or bring the free against his will in band,
Or move the sad a pleasant tale to heere,
Your time is lost, and you no whit the neere!
So love ne learnes, of force the heart to knit:
She serves but those that feel sweet fancies' fit.
_Mirror for Magistrates._

It is not often that hope is rewarded by fruition so completely as
the wishes of the young men of the garrison were met by the state
of the weather on the succeeding day. The heats of summer were
little felt at Oswego at the period of which we are writing; for
the shade of the forest, added to the refreshing breezes from the
lake, so far reduced the influence of the sun as to render the
nights always cool and the days seldom oppressive.

It was now September, a month in which the strong gales of the coast
often appear to force themselves across the country as far as the
great lakes, where the inland sailor sometimes feels that genial
influence which characterizes the winds of the ocean invigorating
his frame, cheering his spirits, and arousing his moral force.
Such a day was that on which the garrison of Oswego assembled to
witness what its commander had jocularly called a "passage of arms."
Lundie was a scholar in military matters at least, and it was one
of his sources of honest pride to direct the reading and thoughts
of the young men under his orders to the more intellectual parts of
their profession. For one in his situation, his library was both
good and extensive, and its books were freely lent to all who
desired to use them. Among other whims that had found their way
into the garrison through these means, was a relish for the sort
of amusement in which it was now about to indulge; and around which
some chronicles of the days of chivalry had induced them to throw
a parade and romance not unsuited to the characters and habits
of soldiers, or to the insulated and wild post occupied by this
particular garrison. While so earnestly bent on pleasure, however,
they on whom that duty devolved did not neglect the safety of the
garrison. One standing on the ramparts of the fort, and gazing on
the waste of glittering water that bounded the view all along the
northern horizon, and on the slumbering and seemingly boundless
forest which filled the other half of the panorama, would have
fancied the spot the very abode of peacefulness and security; but
Duncan of Lundie too well knew that the woods might, at any moment,
give up their hundreds, bent on the destruction of the fort and
all it contained; and that even the treacherous lake offered a
highway of easy approach by which his more civilized and scarcely
less wily foes, the French,