During the first few hours we passed through a dull desolation of desert sand, the queerly shaped hills on either side scarcely breaking the dead monotony, although they often hid from our sight our advance scouts, and made us feel isolated and alone.  Once or twice I imagined I heard the deepening roar of waves bursting upon the shore-line to our right, but could gain no glimpse of blue water through those obscuring dunes.  We were following a well-worn Indian trail, beaten hard by many a moccasined foot; and at last it ran from out the coarser sand and skirted along the western beach, almost at the edge of the waves.  ’T was a most delightful change from the cramped and narrowed vision that had been ours so long.  Our faces were now set almost directly northward; but I could not withdraw my eyes from the noble expanse of water heaving and tumbling in the dazzling sunlight.  Indeed, there was little else about our course to attract attention; the shore in front lay clear and unbroken, bearing a sameness of outline that wearied the vision; each breaking wave was but the type of others that had gone before, and each jutting point of land was the picture of the next to follow.  To our left, there extended, parallel to our course of march, a narrow ridge of white and firmly beaten sand, as regular in appearance as the ramparts of a fort.  Here and there a break occurred where in some spring flood a sudden, rush of water had burst through.  Glancing curiously down these narrow aisles, as we rode steadily onward, I caught fleeting glimpses of level prairie land, green with waving grasses, apparently stretching to the western horizon bare of tree or shrub.  At first, I took this to be water also; until I realized that I looked out upon the great plains of the Illinois.

The Captain was always chary of speech; now he rode onward with so stern a face, that presently I spoke in inquiry.

“You are silent, Captain Wells,” I said.  “One would expect some rejoicing, as we draw so close to the end of our long journey.”

He glanced aside at me.

“Wayland,” he said slowly, “I have been upon the frontier all my life, and have, as you know, lived in Indian camps and shared in many a savage campaign.  I am too old a man, too tried a soldier, ever to hesitate to acknowledge fear; but I tell you now, I believe we are riding northward to our deaths.”

I had known, since first leaving the Maumee, that danger haunted the expedition; yet these solemn words came as a surprise.

“Why think you thus?” I asked, with newly aroused anxiety, my thoughts more with the girl behind than with myself.  “Mademoiselle Toinette tells me the Fort is strong and capable of defence, and surely we are already nearly there.”

“The young girl yonder with De Croix?  It may be so, if it also be well provisioned for a long siege, as it is scarce likely any rescue party will be despatched so far westward.  If I mistake not, Hull will have no men to spare.  Yet I like not the action of the savages about us.  ’T is not in Indian nature to hold off, as these are doing, and permit reinforcements to go by, when they might be halted so easily.  ’T would ease my mind not a little were we attacked.”