She looked at him. His manner was certainly not what she would have looked for in a private soldier, and changing her attitude with feminine quickness, she said--"Come right in and sit down. Here's a pie right out of the oven and you must try it. Not hungry? Nonsense; men, especially soldiers, always are. Now, tell your Mr. Ferguson to call on me. If it isn't some trick of you boys I'll keep you in candles. I'm a Methodist myself, but its hard not to grow cold in religion when there's no church, and war's making everybody wild. My husband and three boys are all out with the militia--and they won't quit fighting while there's a Yankee in Canada. But it's hard on flesh and blood to see a farm like the one we had here going to wrack and ruin, without a man to do a hand's turn. But I shouldn't complain, my house is filled with officers, and they pay me well. And the cows, and the stuff the girls and me did get in, are doing splendid." From the farm Ned went at once to Archy, to see if he couldn't be sent out again at once--to avoid meeting Ferguson--and found Percy there before him. "How'd you like to change into the regulars, Ned?" said Archy briskly. "I hate to lose you, for you're a kind of reliable--from that first hour when you were under fire at Humber Bay, you've been to be depended upon. But Captain Haslem's going with his company to try and steal some Yankee flour up Niagara way, and he'll take you, if you're willing, and its a good chance for you." "You would have the rank of sergeant," said Percy, "and the position of 'Talk Man', as you call an Indian interpreter; for your captain says you studied the Indian dialects with your father last winter in York. Then we shall have no surgeon with us, and as Dr. Tam recommends you highly as an emergency one, I think you can be sure of getting a commission before six months are out." Ned knew Ferguson had been assigned by Percy to duty with the commissariat and transport, which would keep him in Stoney Creek, so he thanked his friends and accepted. He set off that same day, one of seventy-five white men, with a dozen Indian scouts. They reached the Niagara district, and lay low in the great forest that filled the back of the fertile peninsula between the lakes Erie and Ontario. Before them was the garden land of Canada, guarded by forts Erie and George, on the upper and lower lakes--and both alas held by the triumphant enemy--fronted by the deep gorge of the wild Niagara River. For the first time Ned heard the far-off awful roar of the great falls, and in a sense he was afraid, for he understood why the Indians said it was the voice of God. But he had little time to think of the mysterious poetry of the Great Waters. The party were marching silently across Niagara in the night. Tiny lights, placed by brave women in farmhouse windows, told Percy all he needed to know, and so they crept down to the shore by Fort Erie, and seizing boats, put out, as a sentry challenged them.