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"I verily believe that your gallant soul speaks truth, Chevalier de St. Luc!" he exclaimed. "I said once that we would stand and I say it again. We'll put all to the hazard. Since they come without cannon we do have our chance. Go, Langy, and take your needed rest. You have served us well. And now we'll have the others here and talk over our preparations."
Then the entire battalion of Berry went to work at once with spade and pick and ax to prepare a breastwork and abattis, stretching a line of defense in front of the fort, and not using the fort itself. Robert saw the Frenchmen attack the trees with their axes and the earth with their spades, and he divined at once the news that Langy had brought. The Anglo-American army was advancing.
The advanced party of French under Langy and Trepezec, about three hundred and fifty in all, regulars and Canadians, had tried to retreat; but before they could do so, the whole English army had passed them, landed, and placed itself between them and their countrymen. They had no resource but to take to the woods.
The proposed movement promised, no doubt, great advantages; but it was not destined to take effect. Some rangers taken on Lake George by a partisan officer named Langy declared with pardonable exaggeration that twenty-five or thirty thousand men would attack Ticonderoga in less than a fortnight.
Robert did not know it then, but it was the able and daring French partisan, Langy, and he came out of the forest with vital news. Meanwhile Langy saluted Montcalm with the great respect that his successes had won from all the French. When the Marquis turned his keen eye upon him he knew at once that his message, whatever it might be, was of supreme importance. "What is it, Monsieur Langy?"
"A report on the movements of the enemy." "Come to my tent and tell me of it fully, and do you, St. Luc and Bourlamaque, come with me also. You should hear everything." They went into the tent and all sat down. St. Luc's eyes never left the partisan, Langy. He saw that the man was full of his news, eager to tell it, and was impressed with its importance.
The thoughts of St. Luc, and, in truth, the thoughts of all of them, went to the Anglo-American army. "Speak, Monsieur Langy," said Montcalm. "I can see that you have come swiftly, and you would not come so without due cause." "I wish to report to you, sir," said Langy, "that the entire army of the enemy is now embarked on the Lake of the Holy Sacrament, and is advancing against us."
They seem to have climbed the steep gorge at the side of Rogers Rock and followed the Indian path that led to the valley of Trout Brook, thinking to descend it, and, by circling along the outskirts of the valley of Ticonderoga, reach Montcalm's camp at the saw-mill. Langy was used to bushranging; but he too became perplexed in the blind intricacies of the forest.
"What?" "It is as I tell you," replied Langy to St. Luc. "The guns cannot come up the lake until a day or two after the army is landed. Their force is so great that they do not seem to think they will need the artillery." St. Luc, his face glowing, turned to Montcalm. "Sir," he said, "I made to you the prophecy that some chance, some glorious chance, would yet help us, and that chance has come.
A drizzling rain had set in the night before, making the roads, which up until now had been covered with a thick layer of dust, slippery and uncomfortable. Highways which heretofore had been seldom trodden, were full of ruts and bumps, and from Langy to Villiers there was hardly a corner but what showed signs of the invaders' passage.
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