before the portals. Within were a retinue of servants,
careful for the needs of all. When hearts were sad or
time went slowly, a dwarf belonging to the household
played a merry tune on his violin to drive away gloom
from the wilderness mansion.

On one occasion, however, Johnson's hospitality was taxed
beyond all bounds. This was at Fort Johnson in the year
1755, just after he had been made a major-general in the
colonial militia. The French from Canada had already been
making bold encroachments on territory claimed by the
English to the north and the west. They had erected Fort
Duquesne at the junction of the Alleghany and Monongahela
rivers, where the great city of Pittsburgh now stands;
they had fortified Niagara; and now they were bidding
defiance to all the English colonists between the Alleghany
Mountains and the sea. War had not been declared in
Europe, but the inhabitants of the Thirteen Colonies,
only too eager to stay the hand of France in America,
planned a series of blows against the enemy. Among other
things, they decided that an attempt should be made to
capture the French stronghold of Fort Frederic at Crown
Point on Lake Champlain. The officer selected to Command
the expedition to be sent on this enterprise was William
Johnson, now a major-general of the colony of New York.

It flashed at once across Johnson's mind that his redskin
friends could aid him in the undertaking; so he sent
messages with all speed to the tribes, asking them to
gather at his house. Eleven hundred hungry Indians answered