"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,

"How can you turn a horse in this knitting-needle of a lane?" I demanded.

"I don't know," replied Halicarnassus, dubiously, "unless I take him up in
my arms, and set him down with his head the other way,"--and immediately
turned him deftly in a corner about half as large as the wagon.

The next lane we came to was the right one, and being narrow, rocky, and
rough, we left our carriage and walked.

A whole volume of the peaceful and prosperous history of our beloved
country could be read in the fact that the once belligerent, life-saving,
death-dealing fort was represented by a hen-coop; yet I was disappointed.
I was hungry for a ruin,--some visible hint of the past. Such is human
nature,--ever prone to be more impressed by a disappointment of its own
momentary gratification than by the most obvious well-being of a nation;
but, glad or sorry, of Fort Edward was not left one stone upon another.
Several single stones lay about promiscuous rather than belligerent.
Flag-staff and palisades lived only in a few straggling bean-poles. For