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

THE JOUltXEY IN THE WILDERNESS. 289
was no smoke o£ fires, and save for a single boat of
merchants on the second day, we met no travellers.
The season was indeed late, but this desertion of the
waterways impressed Sir William himself; and I have
heard him more than once express a sense of intimida-
tion. "I have come too late, I fear; they must have
dug- up the hatchet ; " he said ; and the future proved
how justly he had reasoned.
I could never depict the blackness of my soul upon
this journey. I have none of those minds that are in
love with the unusual : to see the winter coming and to
lie in the field so far from any house, oppressed me like
a nightmare ; it seemed, indeed, a kind of awful braving
of God's power; and this thought, which I daresay
only writes me down a coward, was greatly exaggerated
by my private knowledge of the errand we were come
uj)on. I was besides encumbered by my duties to Sir
William, whom it fell upon me to entertain; for my
lord was quite sunk into a state bordering on perv it/ i-
linm, watching the woods with a rapt eye, sleeping
scarce at all, and speaking sometimes not twenty words
in a whole day. That which he said was still coherent ;
but it turned almost invariably upon the party for
whom he kept his crazy lookout. He would tell Sir
William often, and always as if it were a new communi-
cation, that he had " a brother somewhere in the
woods,^^ and beg that the sentinels should be directed
" to inquire for him.^^ " I am anxious for news of my
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