Fiction > Book editions > London, 1889 - Master of Ballantrae

388 THE MASTER OF BALLANTHAE.
had so much concern. He continually conjured up
their camps and progresses, the fashion of the country,
the perpetration in a thousand different manners of the
same horrid fact, and that consequent spectacle of the
Master^s bones lying scattered in the wind. These pri-
vate, guilty considerations I would continually observe
to peep forth in the man's talk, like rabbits from a hill.
And it is the less wonder if the scene of his meditations
began to draw him bodily.
It is well known what pretext he took. Sir William
Johnson had a diplomatic errand in these parts; and
my lord and I (from curiosity, as was given out) went
in his company. Sir William was well attended and
liberally supplied. Hunters brought us venison, fish
was taken for us daily in the streams, and brandy ran
like water. We proceeded by day and encamped by
night in the military style ; sentinels were set and
changed; every man had his named duty ; and Sir Wil-
liam was the spring of all. There was much in this that
might at times have entertained me ; but for our mis-
fortune, the weather was extremely harsh, the days were
in the beginning open, but the nights frosty from the
first. A painful keen wind blew most of the time, so
that we sat in the boat with blue fingers, and at night,
as we scorched our faces at the fire, the clothes ujjon our
back a])peared to be of paper. A dreadful solitude sur-
rounded our steps ; the land was quite dispeopled, tbere