as Fort Henry, which took him three days. He was directed to leave such men as might be specially useful as mechanics or otherwise, at any of the stations where they were needed, and then push on to Fort William Henry, which was being strengthened at the foot of Lake George, or Lake Sacrement, as the French called it.

CHAPTER V

LIEUTENANT BATES AT ALBANY-KAATJE VANDER KAAS

IN accordance with these instructions Bates was left at Albany, where his clerkly writing, business habits, and a spelling somewhat less eccentric than that of many of his superiors in rank, but especially his pleasant way of getting along with people and reconciling the conflicting claims and jealousies of the different committees, made him very useful as a local agent of the regiment, to see that supplies did not get delayed on the way, and to purchase such lesser matters as were needed by his comrades in the camp. He had, with some of the others left behind in a similar capacity, opportunity to become at home in the quaint little city, with its steep-roofed houses set with their gable-ends to the street and the stoops in front, the scenes of the social life among the burghers, during this whole warm, leafy month of June which he spent there. The wide street, leading to the water, in the middle of which stood the square meeting-house, with its pointed roof like that in Hingham, the gardens running down to the river and the boat-landings at the steps below, made a very pleasant village.

Here he heard about the new French commandant who had just arrived in Canada, who, now that war had been formally declared, would carry on more systematic and vigorous operations. There were enough deserters, prisoners and escaped captives, passing backward and forward between the two armies, to keep each well informed of the gossip of the other. They said that though the Marquis de Montcalm was a scholar, a courtier, and a country gentle

man, yet he was also a warrior of experience and bravery, and withal, what was quite as useful, had a good share of the qualities necessary for getting on harmoniously with others less honorable and more selfish than himself.

Such a qualification as this, it was shrewdly remarked among the higher provincial officers, was worth a reinforcement of several thousand men. Unless it could be met by some similar talent upon our side it would surely be felt as such.

Special among the supplies which brooked no delay was one of a class about which there was the utmost unanimity of opinion among all parties, including the dusky allies. Brandy was the reward of martial valor among the French Indians, as well as the most available currency for commercial transactions, such as the purchase of captives. Rum sustained the flagging energies of the Massachusetts men, while those of Virginia and Pennsylvania got whiskey for the same purpose. Molasses was also in demand among the Massachusetts men, partly for the popular admixture known as blackstrap, and partly because in time of leisure it was possible with rude stills to convert it into the more seductive and more powerful form. In the winter it was an important ingredient of the spruce beer. Among the Albanians of the class which could not afford the choice vintages of France and the Rhine, "Hollands," on patriotic and hereditary grounds, naturally enjoyed the widest popularity. Indeed, on occasions of special rejoicing it was by no means despised in the more aristocratic circles. The soldiers had indeed been warned at home by Parson Gay and his brethren against the dangers of excess, but the line was then as it has remained for a hundred and fifty years later—if not since the time of Noah-not easy to draw, nor, indeed, always carefully sought for.

But this was not Bates's temptation. The mixer of the punch was often fairer to his senses and more intoxicating than the product. He found that some of the Albany juffrows mixed it in a way to be not only seductive to the pal

ate and bewildering to the brain, but to make themselves equally so to the eye.

Chief among them was Juffrow Kaatje Vander Kaas. She was the daughter of a hard-favored and hard-headed merchant of whom Bates had had occasion several times to buy extras for his company and the regiment, but who, in spite of his hard-headedness, was so taken with the fresh, boyish face, cheerful companionship and unfamiliarity with market values of the young lieutenant as to violate very early one of the prudent Albany customs by inviting him to his house. Kaatje was a round-faced, peach-cheeked girl, very quiet in her manner, although she was inwardly greatly astonished that her father should have done so ununprecedented a thing as to bring home this pretty boy at short notice. She managed, however, notwithstanding her demure ways, to look very kindly at him. Perhaps neither the punch nor the girl would have been alone sufficient, but between them soon there began to ring in his ears the refrain of "begone, dull care!" driving away the memories which he had assured not only himself but another, once thought quite as fair, should never fade. But the vision of the dark-eyed charmer grew fainter and fainter as the realities before his eyes filled his mind.

Thus, after a few days the Province of Massachusetts Bay, through its agent, Mr. Sanders, got a bill which made the worthy commissary open his eyes as wide as those of Juffrow Vander Kaas; but, as the lieutenant at once shrewdly observed, they offered by no means the same temptation to gaze further into their pellucid depths. However, as the transaction was not a very large one, the politic commissioner did not wish to discredit his State by repudiating a bargain once it was made. He paid it and then very vigorously cautioned the lieutenant-who would have made up the difference if he had had the wherewithal-about trading with persons not recommended by his government.

This did not prohibit social relations, and if, when Mynheer Vander Kaas found there were to be no more such

bargains, the punch grew weaker, young Bates made up for it by staying longer and drinking more, which gave him just as good a headache and afforded a more favorable opportunity for the development of the heart-ache. This latter symptom, in fact, amounted to little more than an agreeable consciousness that the sentimental organ really existed. It cannot be denied that the boy was fickle, and there was no reasonable prospect that the present attack would be any more serious than had been the last one of which this history takes cognizance-and no one knows how many before.

Joshua's acquaintance extended among the official society of the bored and stupid village. His good looks and the air which he always carried with him of being of a social grade above that of most of the other provincial officers, although, indeed, he never made any open pretensions thereto, procured him an invitation to take part in some theatricals got up chiefly by the British officers, led by no less a person than the colonel of a regiment recently arrived from "home," as they called it.

The young lieutenant's face and figure, except his rather too great height, made him specially desirable for the female parts, since the young ladies in the town would be allowed to take no part.

The more staid matrons were scandalized, and the chaplains of some of the New England regiments preached against such performances, saying that the ease and perfection with which scenes of looseness and vice were imitated showed that indeed it was not all imitation, and that the dramatic instruction had been of a very practical character.

The young soldier himself thought it a little below his dignity as a commissioned officer, but as he had before him the example and countenance of a gentleman who had seen service in European armies, and capitals, to whom colonial habits made him feel due deference, he could not long resist the temptation. He entered with zest into the sport. Mefrow Vander Kaas, though of a cheerful disposition by