A few weeks later Hebecourt had his revenge.  About the middle of March a report came to Montreal that a large party of rangers had been cut to pieces a few miles from Ticonderoga, and that Rogers himself was among the slain.  This last announcement proved false; but the rangers had suffered a crushing defeat.  Colonel Haviland, commanding at Fort Edward, sent a hundred and eighty of them, men and officers, on a scouting party towards Ticonderoga; and Captain Pringle and Lieutenant Roche, of the twenty-seventh regiment, joined them as volunteers, no doubt through a love of hardy adventure, which was destined to be fully satisfied.  Rogers commanded the whole.  They passed down Lake George on the ice under cover of night, and then, as they neared the French outposts, pursued their way by land behind Rogers Rock and the other mountains of the western shore.  On the preceding day, the twelfth of March, Hebecourt had received a reinforcement of two hundred Mission Indians and a body of Canadians.  The Indians had no sooner arrived than, though nominally Christians, they consulted the spirits, by whom they were told that the English were coming.  On this they sent out scouts, who came back breathless, declaring that they had found a great number of snow-shoe tracks.  The superhuman warning being thus confirmed, the whole body of Indians, joined by a band of Canadians and a number of volunteers from the regulars, set out to meet the approaching enemy, and took their way up the valley of Trout Brook, a mountain gorge that opens from the west upon the valley of Ticonderoga.

Towards three o’clock on the afternoon of that day Rogers had reached a point nearly west of the mountain that bears his name.  The rough and rocky ground was buried four feet in snow, and all around stood the gray trunks of the forest, bearing aloft their skeleton arms and tangled intricacy of leafless twigs.  Close on the right was a steep hill, and at a little distance on the left was the brook, lost under ice and snow.  A scout from the front told Rogers that a party of Indians was approaching along the bed of the frozen stream, on which he ordered his men to halt, face to that side, and advance cautiously.  The Indians soon appeared, and received a fire that killed some of them and drove back the rest in confusion.

Not suspecting that they were but an advance-guard, about half the rangers dashed in pursuit, and were soon met by the whole body of the enemy.  The woods rang with yells and musketry.  In a few minutes some fifty of the pursuers were shot down, and the rest driven back in disorder upon their comrades.  Rogers formed them all on the slope of the hill; and here they fought till sunset with stubborn desperation, twice repulsing the overwhelming numbers of the assailants, and thwarting all their efforts to gain the heights in the rear.  The combatants were often not twenty yards apart, and sometimes they were mixed together.  At length a large body of Indians succeeded in turning