early days, the days of the first American commanders, military roads
had been made through the forest,--roads even now smooth and solid,
although trees of a second growth meet overhead. But that was when the
fort was young and stood firmly on its legs. In 1856 there was no time
for road-making, for when military duty was over there was always more
or less mending to keep the whole fortification from sliding down hill
into the lake.

On Sunday there was service in the little chapel, an upper room
overlooking the inside parade-ground. Here the kindly Episcopal
chaplain read the chapters about Balaam and Balak, and always made the
same impressive pause after 'Let me die the death of the righteous,
and let my last end be like his.' (Dear old man! he has gone. Would
that our last end might indeed be like his!) Not that the chaplain
confined his reading to the Book of Numbers; but as those chapters are
appointed for the August Sundays, and as it was in August that the
summer visitors came to Mackinac, the little chapel is in many minds
associated with the patient Balak, his seven altars, and his seven
rams.

There was state and discipline in the fort even on Sundays;
bugle-playing marshalled the congregation in, bugle-playing marshalled
them out. If the sermon was not finished, so much the worse for the
sermon, but it made no difference to the bugle; at a given moment it
sounded, and out marched all the soldiers, drowning the poor
chaplain's hurrying voice with their tramp down the stairs. The
officers attended service in full uniform, sitting erect and dignified
in the front seats. We used to smile at the grand air they had, from
the stately gray-haired major down to the youngest lieutenant fresh
from the Point. But brave hearts were beating under those fine