the march of Colonel Bradstreet toward Lake Ontario, were building a
bridge of logs through a swamp. Plunging down a stake, one of these
pioneers felt it graze against some hard, smooth substance. He called
his comrades, and, by their united efforts, the top of the bell was
raised to the surface, a rope made fast to it, and thence passed over the
horizontal limb of a tree. Heave ho! up they hoisted their prize,
dripping with moisture, and festooned with verdant water-moss. As the
base of the bell emerged from the swamp, the pioneers perceived that a
skeleton was clinging with its bony fingers to the clapper, but
immediately relaxing its nerveless grasp, sank back into the stagnant
water. The bell then gave forth a sullen clang. No wonder that he was
in haste to speak, after holding his tongue for such a length of time!
The pioneers shoved the bell to and fro, thus ringing a loud and heavy
peal, which echoed widely through the forest, and reached the ears of
Colonel Bradstreet, and his three thousand men. The soldiers paused on
their march; a feeling of religion, mingled with borne-tenderness,
overpowered their rude hearts; each seemed to hear the clangor of the old
church-bell, which had been familiar to hint from infancy, and had tolled
at the funerals of all his forefathers. By what magic had that holy
sound strayed over the wide-murmuring ocean, and become audible amid the
clash of arms, the loud crashing of the artillery over the rough
wilderness-path, and the melancholy roar of the wind among the boughs?

The New-Englanders hid their prize in a shadowy nook, betwixt a large
gray stone and the earthy roots of an overthrown tree; and when the
campaign was ended, they conveyed our friend to Boston, and put him up at
auction on the sidewalk of King Street. He was suspended, for the nonce,
by a block and tackle, and being swung backward and forward, gave such
loud and clear testimony to his own merits, that the auctioneer had no
need to say a word. The highest bidder was a rich old representative