"I prophesy that will be the langest fifteen mile ye'll often gang over," said Old Tom, when he and Dick came to a halt at last on the bank of the Dead River, having put behind them the Great Portage and its three intervening lakelets, after days of dragging and pushing of boats over a rough ridge, and through ponds and bogs. "I gather from offeecial sources," continued the Fiddler, "that we're like to reach the Chaudiere River in eight or ten days, though I hae my doots, seeing it's mony a mile up this river we'll be ganging, and then over God knows what kind of country after that. Weel, weel, lad, it's Quebec or nothing now, if ye hauld out, for devil a bit will ony mon of us gang willingly back over the road we've come by!" So jubilant were the men at having overcome the difficulties of the great carrying-place, that they whistled and jested as they launched their boats on the sluggish waters of the Dead River. They acted as if the end of their journey were in sight. Colonel Arnold had already sent an Indian messenger to General Schuyler, whose army from the province of New York had in August started under Montgomery from Ticonderoga to enter Canada below Montreal and eventually unite with Arnold's force before Quebec. The colonel thought to receive an answer to this letter on arriving at the Chaudiere. "It's a blithe lot of men, true for ye, wi' their whistling and capering," said old Tom, in an undertone, as he and Dick stood recovering their breath after much pulling and shoving of boats. "All looks weel and bonny the day, but ye maun put nae trust in appearances. Do ye moind, ayont Curritunk, afore we left the Kennebec, how ye steppit sae merrily on the green moss that seemed to cover level ground for sae lang a stretch, and how ye found 'twas rotten bog beneath the surface, and full of them snags that tripped ye up and cut your feet in the devil's ain way? Mony's the mon like that,--and woman, too!" Up the Dead River for eighty-three miles the army proceeded, the riflemen still leading. Seventeen times they had to unload their boats and carry the loads past places that were not navigable. On this part of the journey the men were assailed by rains and cold weather. Lieutenant M'Cleland, more fragile in body than in spirit, was one of many whose constitutions began to yield to these assaults. With a cold in the lungs, he toiled on, performing his duties and refusing aid, until his increasing weakness compelled him to relinquish the former and accept the latter, on his comrades' insistence and his captain's orders. When the chosen route departed from the Dead River, to cross a mountain, M'Cleland was placed on a litter and so carried forward. "If I can only hold out till we enter Quebec!" he said from his litter, one bleak, drizzling day, while Captain Hendricks, Dick, MacAlister, and others bore him up the wooded mountain-side,--for the captain took his turn at the litter with the others.