joyously on its surface; and while the sight was offended
at the savage, skulking among the trees of the forest,
like some dark spirit moving cautiously in its course of
secret destruction, and watching the moment when he might
pounce unnoticed on his unprepared victim, it followed,
with momentary pleasure and excitement, the activity and
skill displayed by the harmless paddler, in the swift
and meteor-like race that set the troubled surface of
the Huron in a sheet of hissing foam. Nor was this all.
When the eye turned wood-ward, it fell heavily, and
without interest, upon a dim and dusky point, known to
enter upon savage scenes and unexplored countries; whereas,
whenever it reposed upon the lake, it was with an eagerness
and energy that embraced the most vivid recollections of
the past, and led the imagination buoyantly over every
well-remembered scene that had previously been traversed,
and which must be traversed again before the land of the
European could be pressed once more. The forest, in a
word, formed, as it were, the gloomy and impenetrable
walls of the prison-house, and the bright lake that lay
before it the only portal through which happiness and
liberty could be again secured.

The principal entrance into the fort, which presented
four equal sides of a square, was from the forest; but,
immediately opposite to this, and behind the apartments
of the commanding officer, there was another small gate
that opened upon the lake shore; but which, since the
investment of the place, had been kept bolted and locked,
with a precaution befitting the danger to which the