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If the railroad-men at Saratoga tell you you can go straight from there to the foot of Lake George, don’t you believe a word of it.  Perhaps you can, and perhaps you cannot; but you are not any more likely to can for their saying so.  We left Saratoga for Fort-William-Henry Hotel in full faith of an afternoon ride and a sunset arrival, based on repeated and unhesitating assurances to that effect.  Instead of which, we went a few miles, and were then dumped into a blackberry-patch, where we were informed that we must wait seven hours.  So much for the afternoon ride through summer fields and “Sunset on Lake George” from the top of a coach.  But I made no unmanly laments, for we were out of Saratoga, and that was happiness.  We were among cows and barns and homely rail-fences, and that was comfort; so we strolled contentedly through the pastures, found a river,—­I believe it was the Hudson; at any rate, Halicarnassus said so, though I don’t imagine he knew; but he would take oath it was Acheron rather than own up to ignorance on any point whatever,—­watched the canal-boats and boatmen go down, marvelled at the arbor-vitae trees growing wild along the river-banks, green, hale, stately, and symmetrical, against the dismal mental background of two little consumptive shoots bolstered up in our front yard at home, and dying daily, notwithstanding persistent and affectionate nursing with “flannels and rum.”  And then we went back to the blackberry-station and inquired whether there was nothing celebrated in the vicinity to which visitors of received Orthodox creed should dutifully pay their respects, and were gratified to learn that we were but a few miles from Jane McCrea and her Indian murderers.  Was a carriage procurable?  Well, yes, if the ladies would be willing to go in that.  It wasn’t very smart, but it would take ’em safe,—­as if “the ladies” would have raised any objections to going in a wheelbarrow, had it been necessary, and so we bundled in.  The hills were steep, and our horse, the property of an adventitious bystander, was of the Rosinante breed; but we were in no hurry, seeing that the only thing awaiting us this side the sunset was a blackberry-patch without any blackberries, and we walked up hill and scraped down, till we got into a lane which somebody told us led to the Fort, from which the village, Fort Edward, takes its name.  But, instead of a fort, the lane ran full tilt against a pair of bars.

“Now we are lost,” I said, sententiously.

“A gem of countless price,” pursued Halicarnassus, who never quotes poetry except to inflame me.

“How long will it be profitable to remain here?” asked Grande, when we had sat immovable and speechless for the space of five minutes.

“There seems to be nowhere else to go.  We have got to the end,” said Halicarnassus, roaming as to his eyes over into the wheat-field beyond.

“We might turn,” suggested the Anakim, looking bright,