The skill and valor of Montcalm, St.Luc, De Levis and the others, no matter how skillful and valiant they might be, could avail nothing, and, after Ticonderoga, it would be a mere question of time until Crown Point fell too.

And after that would come Quebec and the conquest of Canada.
Now, when his spirits had soared so high, the fall was correspondingly low.

His sensitive mind, upon which events always painted themselves with such vividness, reflected only the darkest pictures.

He saw the triumphant advance of the French, the Indians laying waste the whole of New York Province, and the enemy at the gates of New York itself.
The night itself was a perfect reproduction of his own mind.

He saw through his spirits as through a glass.