Page:Bacheller--D'ri and I.djvu/245

D'RI AND I friend, to start off with no destination but Canada is too much even for you. We have no men to waste. Wait; a rusting sabre is better than a hole in the heart. There will be good work for you in a few days, I hope."

And there was—the job of which I have spoken, that came to me through his kind offices. We set sail in a schooner one bright morning,—D'ri and I and thirty others,—bound for Two-Mile Creek. Horses were waiting for us there. We mounted them, and made the long journey overland—a ride through wood and swale on a road worn by the wagons of the emigrant, who, even then, was pushing westward to the fertile valleys of Ohio. It was hard travelling, but that was the heyday of my youth, and the bird music, and the many voices of a waning summer in field and forest, were somehow in harmony with the great song of my heart. In the middle of the afternoon of September 6, we came to the Bay, and pulled up at headquarters, a two-story frame building on a high shore. There were wooded islands in the offing, and between them we could see the fleet—nine vessels, big and little.