John Stark is not a man easily stirred. I remember at the battle of Bunker's Hill, when a man rushed up to him, and told him that his son was killed,--which was a mistake, for he is alive at this day,--John turned to the man and said: "Back to your post. This is no time to think of our private affairs." But when he saw that brilliant soldier, that man whose virtues, accomplishments, and genial, lovable nature showed us what a man might be, lying there, dead, he knelt down beside him, and the tears ran down his cheeks. All of us were overcome with grief, we loved the man so much. Stark took his hand, bent over, and kissed his forehead. "Good-by, my dear friend. God bless you and have mercy on us." He rose, and I walked away with him. "Comee, the life is departed out of Israel. I have no further faith in this expedition. Our sun is set." We mourned his loss a long time, and our Province raised the money for a great monument, which was erected to him in Westminster Abbey, in memory of "the affection her officers and soldiers bore to his command." After Lord Howe was killed, everything fell into disorder. The army became all mixed up in the thick woods, and was sent back to the landing-place. CHAPTER XI FORT TICONDEROGA AND THE ASSAULT The following morning the Rangers were sent to the front, to the place we occupied the day before. Captain Stark with Captain Abercrombie and Mr. Clark, the engineer, went with two hundred Rangers to Rattlesnake Hill to reconnoitre the French works. Fort Ticonderoga was at the southern end of the narrow strip of land which lies between Lake Champlain and the outlet of Lake George. A half-mile to the north of the fort, a little ridge runs across the peninsula. As we looked down from the hill, we saw the French hard at work on a strong breastwork of logs which they had nearly completed. At either end of it was low, marshy ground, difficult to pass. The breastwork zigzagged along the ridge in such a manner that if troops attacked it, the French could rake them with grapeshot, and it was too high to climb over. "How are we going to get over that breastwork, Edmund? There's no slope to it, and we can't reach within two feet of the top." "Oh, we'll knock it to pieces with cannon, and then we can rush over it. Our officers will know what to do." "There won't be any rushing through that mass of sharpened stakes that they have driven into the ground in front of the works." "No. That's so. There's a regular thicket of them with the points sticking out toward us. They'll have to be cut off or torn up, and the French will be raking us all the time." "See those Canadians cutting down the forest just beyond the stakes. The tops of the trees fall outward, and the branches are matted together. If Abercrombie thinks his army can march up to the breastwork, he's greatly mistaken."