Cardigan

Robert Chambers

Chambers Robert W. Robert William

Cardigan

INTRODUCTION

This is the Land of the Pioneer,

Where a life-long feud was healed;

Where the League of the Men whose Coats were Red

With the Men of the Woods whose Skins were Red

Was riveted, forged, and sealed.

Now, by the souls of our Silent Dead,

God save our sons from the League of Red!

Plough up the Land of Battle

Here in our hazy hills;

Plough! to the lowing of cattle;

Plough! to the clatter of mills;

Follow the turning furrows'

Gold, where the deep loam breaks,

While the hand of the harrow burrows,

Clutching the clod that cakes;

North and south on the harrow's line,

Under the bronzed pines' boughs,

The silvery flint-tipped arrows shine

In the wake of a thousand ploughs!

Plough us the Land of the Pioneer,

Where the buckskinned rangers bled;

Where the Redcoats reeled from a reeking field,

And a thousand Red Men fled;

Plough us the land of the wolf and deer,

The land of the men who laughed at fear,

The land of our Martyred Dead!

Here where the ghost-flower, blowing,

Grows from the bones below,

Patters the hare, unknowing,

Passes the cawing crow:

Shadows of hawk and swallow,

Shadows of wind-stirred wood,

Dapple each hill and hollow,

Here where our dead men stood:

Wild bees hum through the forest vines

Where the bullets of England hummed,

And the partridge drums in the ringing pines

Where the drummers of England drummed.

This is the Land of the Pioneer,

Where a life-long feud was healed;

Where the League of the Men whose Coats were Red

With the Men of the Woods whose Skins were Red

Was riveted, forged, and sealed.

Now, by the blood of our Splendid Dead,

God save our sons from the League of Red!

В В В В R. W. C.

Broadalbin.

PREFACE

Those who read this romance for the sake of what history it may contain will find the histories from which I have helped myself more profitable.

Those antiquarians who hunt their hobbies through books had best drop the trail of this book at the preface, for they will draw but a blank covert in these pages. Better for the antiquarian that he seek the mansion of Sir William Johnson, which is still standing in Johnstown, New York, and see with his own eyes the hatchet-scars in the solid mahogany banisters where Thayendanegea hacked out polished chips. It would doubtless prove more profitable for the antiquarian to thumb those hatchet-marks than these pages.

But there be some simple folk who read romance for its own useless sake.

To such quiet minds, innocent and disinterested, I have some little confidences to impart: There are still trout in the Kennyetto; the wild ducks still splash on the Vlaie, where Sir William awoke the echoes with his flintlock; the spot where his hunting-box stood is still called Summer-House Point; and huge pike in golden-green chain-mail still haunt the dark depths of the Vlaie water, even on this fair April day in the year of our Lord 1900.

В В В В The Author.

CHAPTER I

On the 1st of May, 1774, the anchor-ice, which for so many months had silver-plated the river's bed with frosted crusts, was ripped off and dashed into a million gushing flakes by the amber outrush of the springtide flood.

On that day I had laid my plans for fishing the warm shallows where the small fry, swarming in early spring, attract the great lean fish which have lain benumbed all winter under their crystal roof of ice.

So certain was I of a holiday undisturbed by school-room tasks that I whistled up boldly as I sat on my cot bed, sorting hooks according to their sizes, and smoothing out my feather-flies to make sure the moths had not loosened wing or body. It was, therefore, with misgiving that I heard Peter and Esk go into the school-room, stamping their feet to make what noise they were able, and dragging their horn-books along the balustrade.

Now we had no tasks set us for three weeks, for our schoolmas