of the savages going by across our line. There might be the value of a
weak battalion present; all naked to the waist, blacked with grease and soot,
and painted with white lead and vermilion, according to their beastly habits.
They went one behind another like a string of geese, and at a quickish trot; so
that they took but a little while to rattle by, and disappear again among the
woods. Yet I suppose we endured a greater agony of hesitation and suspense in
these few minutes than goes usually to a man's whole life. Whether they were
French or English Indians, whether they desired scalps or prisoners, whether we
should declare ourselves upon the chance, or lie quiet and continue the
heart-breaking business of our journey: sure, I think these were questions to
have puzzled the brains of Aristotle himself. Ballantrae turned to me with a
face all wrinkled up, and his teeth showing in his mouth, like what I have read
of people starving; he said no word, but his whole appearance was a kind of
dreadful question.
    »They may be of the English side,« I whispered; »and think! the best we
could then hope is to begin this over again.«
    »I know - I know,« he said. »Yet it must come to a plunge at last.« And he
suddenly plucked out his coin, shook it in his closed hands, looked at it, and
then lay down with his face in the dust.
    Addition by Mr. Mackellar. - I drop the Chevalier's narration at this point
because the couple quarrelled and separated the same day; and the Chevalier's
account of the quarrel seems to me (I must confess) quite incompatible with the
nature of either of the men. Henceforth they wandered alone, undergoing
extraordinary sufferings; until first one and then the other was picked up by a
party from Fort St. Frederick. Only two things are to be noted. And first (as
most important for my purpose) that the Master, in the course of his miseries,
buried his treasure, at a point never since discovered, but of which he took a
drawing in his own blood on the lining of his hat. And second, that on his
coming thus penniless to the Fort, he was welcomed like a brother by the
Chevalier, who thence paid his way to France. The simplicity of Mr. Burke's
character leads him at this point to praise the Master exceedingly; to an eye
more worldly-wise, it would seem it was the Chevalier alone that