rs of the same horrid fact, and that consequent spectacle
of the Master's bones lying scattered in the wind. These private, 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 William was the spring of all.
There was much in this that might at times have entertained me; but, for
our misfortune, 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
upon our back appeared to be of paper. A dreadful solitude surrounded
our steps; the land was quite dispeopled, there was no smoke of 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 intimidation. "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
upon. 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 _pervigilium_, 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;