CHAPTER VIII.

A land of love, and a land of light,
Withouten sun, or moon, or night: 
Where the river swa’d a living stream,
And the light a pure celestial beam: 
The land of vision, it would seem
A still, an everlasting dream.
Queen’s Wake.

The rest that succeeds fatigue, and which attends a newly awakened sense of security, is generally sweet and deep.  Such was the fact with Mabel, who did not rise from her humble pallet —­ such a bed as a sergeant’s daughter might claim in a remote frontier post —­ until long after the garrison had obeyed the usual summons of the drums, and had assembled at the morning parade.  Sergeant Dunham, on whose shoulders fell the task of attending to these ordinary and daily duties, had got through all his morning avocations, and was beginning to think of his breakfast, before his child left her room, and came into the fresh air, equally bewildered, delighted, and grateful, at the novelty and security of her new situation.

At the time of which we are writing, Oswego was one of the extreme frontier posts of the British possessions on this continent.  It had not been long occupied, and was garrisoned by a battalion of a regiment which had been originally Scotch, but into which many Americans had been received since its arrival in this country; all innovation that had led the way to Mabel’s father filling the humble but responsible situation of the oldest sergeant.  A few young officers also, who were natives of the colonies, were to be found in the corps.  The fort itself, like most works of that character, was better adapted to resist an attack of savages than to withstand a regular siege; but the great difficulty of transporting heavy artillery and other necessaries rendered the occurrence of the latter a probability so remote as scarcely to enter into the estimate of the engineers who had planned the defences.  There were bastions of earth and logs, a dry ditch, a stockade, a parade of considerable extent, and barracks of logs, that answered the double purpose of dwellings and fortifications.  A few light field-pieces stood in the area of the fort, ready to be conveyed to any point where they might be wanted, and one or two heavy iron guns looked out from the summits of the advanced angles, as so many admonitions to the audacious to respect their power.

When Mabel, quitting the convenient, but comparatively retired hut where her father had been permitted to place her, issued into the pure air of the morning, she found herself at the foot of a bastion, which lay invitingly before her, with a promise of giving a coup d’oeil of all that had been concealed in the darkness of the preceding night.  Tripping up the grassy ascent, the light-hearted as well as light-footed girl found herself at once on a point where the sight, at a few varying glances, could take in all the external novelties of her new situation.