It was on these expeditions that I learned something of these rough riflemen which I had not suspected—­their passionate devotion to the forest.  What the sea is to mariners, the endless, uncharted wilderness was to these forest runners; they loved and hated it, they suspected and trusted it.  A forest voyage finished, they steered for the nearest port with all the eager impatience of sea-cloyed sailors.  Yet, scarcely were they anchored in some frontier haven than they fell to dreaming of the wilderness, of the far silences in the trackless sea of trees, of the winds ruffling the forest’s crests till ten thousand trees toss their leaves, silver side up, as white-caps flash, rolling in long patches on a heaving waste of waters.

Yet, in all those weeks I never heard one word or hint of that devotion expressed or implied, not one trace of appreciation, not one shadow of sentiment.  If I ventured to speak of the vast beauty of the woods, there was no response from my shy companions; one appeared to vie with another in concealing all feeling under a careless mask and a bantering manner.

Once only can I recall a voluntary expression of pleasure in beauty; it came from Jack Mount, one blue night in July, when the heavens flashed under summer stars till the vaulted skies seemed plated solidly with crusted gems.

“Them stars look kind of nice,” he said, then colored with embarrassment and spat a quid of spruce-gum into the camp-fire.

Yet humanity demands some outlet for accumulated sentiment, and these men found it in the dirge-like songs and laments and rude ballads of the wilderness, which I think bear a close resemblance to the sailor-men’s songs, in words as well as in the dolorous melodies, fit only for the scraping whine of a two-string fiddle in a sugar-camp.

The magic of June faded from the forests, smothered under the magnificent and deeper glory of July’s golden green; the early summer ripened into August, finding us still afoot in the Kingsland district gathering in the loyal, warning the rash, comforting the down-cast, threatening the suspected.  Twice, by expresses bound for Saratoga, I sent full reports to Schuyler, but received no further orders.  I wondered whether he was displeased at my failure to arrest Walter Butler; and we redoubled our efforts to gain news of him.  Three times we heard of his presence in or near the Kingsland district:  once at Tribes Hill, once at Fort Plain, and once it was said he was living quietly in a farm-house near Johnstown, which he had the effrontery to enter in broad daylight.  But we failed to come up with him, and to this day I do not know whether any of this information we received was indeed correct.  It was the first day of August when we heard of Butler’s presence near Johnstown; we had been lying at a tavern called “The Brick House,” a two-story inn standing where the Albany and Schenectady roads fork near Fox Creek, and there had been great fear of McDonald’s renegades that week, and I had advised the despatch of an express to Albany asking for troops to protect the valley when I chanced to overhear a woman say that firing had been heard in the direction of Stanwix.