“My stable boy, Peter, hass not let him out of sight, since he landed from the Dirkhoeven.  Peter is not a lad of brilliant appearance, which iss perhaps all the better for our purpose, but he will keep Van Zoon in sight, if it iss humanly possible, without being himself suspected.”

“Well done, Jacobus, but I might have known that you would take all needful precautions.”

Robert came back from the window, and they promptly changed the current of the talk, speaking now of the army, its equipment, and the probable time of its march to meet Dieskau.  Presently they left Mynheer Huysman’s house, and Robert and the merchant went toward the camp on the flats.  Here they beheld a scene of great activity and of enormous interest to Robert.

Few stranger armies have ever been gathered than that which Colonel William Johnson was preparing to lead against Crown Point.  The New Englanders brought with them all their characteristics, their independence, their love of individualism and their piety.  Despite this piety it was an army that swore hugely, and, despite its huge swearing, it was an honest army.  It survives in written testimony that the greatest swearers were from the provinces of New York and Rhode Island, and Colonel Ephraim Williams, an officer among them writing at the time, said that the language they most used was “the language of Hell.”  And, on the other hand, a New York officer testified that not a housewife in Albany or its suburbs could mourn the loss of a single chicken.  Private property everywhere was absolutely safe, and, despite the oaths and rough appearance of the men, no woman was ever insulted.

“They’re having prayer meeting now,” said Mr. Hardy, as they came upon the flats.  “I’ve learned they have sermons twice a week—­their ministers came along with them—­prayers every day, and the singing of songs many times.  They often alternate the psalm singing with the military drill, but I’m not one to decry their observances.  Religious fervor is a great thing in battle.  It made the Ironsides of Cromwell invincible.”

Five hundred voices, nearly all untrained, were chanting a hymn.  They were the voices of farmers and frontiersmen, but the great chorus had volume and majesty, and Robert was not one to depreciate them.  Instead he was impressed.  He understood the character of both New Englanders and New Yorkers.  Keen for their own, impatient of control, they were nevertheless capable of powerful collective effort.  A group of Mohawks standing by were also watching with grave and serious attention.  When they raised a chant to Manitou they demanded the utmost respect, and they gave it also, without the asking, to the white man when he sang in his own way to his own God.

It was when they turned back to the town that they were hailed in a joyous voice, and Robert beheld the young English officer, Grosvenor, whom he had known in New York, Grosvenor, a little thinner than of old, but more tanned and with an air of experience.  His pleasure at meeting Robert again was great and unaffected.  He shook hands with him warmly and exclaimed: