Like all American forts, it was formed with earthen ramparts, covered by rich green turf, and defended by tall stockades of dry white timber. Within were seen the shingle-covered roofs of the low barrack buildings, tarred and painted black, and all glistening in the sunshine. Two of the lower bastions were faced with stone and washed by the azure water of Lake George, while a deep fosse secured the fort on the landward, and dangerous morasses protected its flanks. Beyond lay a cleared space, where the timber of the old primeval forest had been cut down for garrison purposes. The bayonets of the sentinels flashed like stars on the green ramparts ever and anon, while some thirty or forty lines of steady horizontal light marked where the setting sun shone on the iron guns that peered through the embrasures, or frowned _en barbette_ above the slope of the parapets. The gaudy Union Jack hung unwaved upon its staff. As evening closed in, masses of vapour ascended from the bosom of the deep blue water, and wreathed like white and golden scarfs about the summits of the mountains, whose tops were mellowed in the distance, and those rocky bluffs that start forward from the wooded slopes, as if to break the harmony of the scenery by a few darker and bolder features. As the last vestige of the sun sank, and its rays alone remained to play upon the clouds above and the ripples of the Horican below, the boom of the evening gun was heard pealing through the wilderness with a hundred solemn reverberations; and as the flag descended from its staff on the fort, a sound on the soft and ambient air came floating up the mountainside. "The drummers are beating the evening _retreat_, Mary," said MacGillivray to his wife, who was looking pale and weary; "in half-an-hour we shall be with old Munro." "Yonder fort is like some place I have seen before," said she, pressing her husband's hand. "Aye, Lady Glenarrow," responded Ewen Chisholm, coming close with the easy familiarity of a Highlander--a familiarity that is destitute of all assurance; "you are thinking of Fort George, for there are the same palisades and the same fashion of ramparts washed by the waves of the Moray Firth; but oich! oich! we miss green Ard-na-saor." "And the Black Isle, and the Chanonry-ness, Ewen," added MacGillivray. "Yes, yes," said Mary, thoughtfully, to the soldiers in their own language; "the land is beautiful; but it is not _home_. Then what is it to us?" "Yet," said Ewen, "here is a badge for your bonnet, MacGillivray, and, though of American growth, you cannot despise it." "Thanks, Ewen," said the officer, with a kindling eye, as he placed the gift in his bonnet. It was a sprig of the red whortleberry, the badge of those of his name in Scotland, where they are styled the _Clann Gillibhreac_, "or the Sons of the Freckled Man."