father’s house In the land of the naked knee, Between the eagles that fly in the lift And the herrings that swim in the sea, And now that I am a captain-man With a braw cockade in my hat— Many a name have I heard,” he thought,  “But never a name like that.”

p. 112

p. 113III. THE PLACE OF THE NAME

p. 113

There fell a war in a woody place, Lay far across the sea, A war of the march in the mirk midnight And the shot from behind the tree, The shaven head and the painted face, The silent foot in the wood, In a land of a strange, outlandish tongue That was hard to be understood.

There

It fell about the gloaming The general stood with his staff, p. 114He stood and he looked east and west With little mind to laugh. “Far have I been and much have I seen, And kent both gain and loss, But here we have woods on every hand And a kittle water to cross. Far have I been and much have I seen, But never the beat of this; And there’s one must go down to that waterside To see how deep it is.”

p. 114

It fell in the dusk of the night When unco things betide, The skilly captain, the Cameron, Went down to that waterside. Canny and soft the captain went; And a man of the woody land, With the shaven head and the painted face, Went down at his right hand. p. 115It fell in the quiet night, There was never a sound to ken; But all of the woods to the right and the left Lay filled with the painted men.

p. 115

“Far have I been and much have I seen, Both as a man and boy, But never have I set forth a foot On so perilous an employ.” It fell in the dusk of the night When unco things betide, That he was aware of a captain-man Drew near to the waterside. He was aware of his coming Down in the gloaming alone; And he looked in the face of the man And lo! the face was his own. “This is my weird,” he said,  “And now I ken the worst; p. 116For many shall fall the morn, But I shall fall with the first. O, you of the outland tongue, You of the painted face, This is the place of my death; Can you tell me the name of the place?” “Since the Frenchmen have been here They have called it Sault-Marie; But that is a name for priests, And not for you and me. It went by another word,”  Quoth he of the shaven head: “It was called Ticonderoga In the days of the great dead.”

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