The stranger seemed to listen to him with pleasure, often turning his eyes to the lad's face as he spoke, rather than to the landscape to which he pointed; and when he had done, he laid, his hand on his shoulder, saying--
"I wish I had such a guide as you, Walter, for my onward journey."
"Will it be far?" asked the youth.
"Good faith, I cannot well tell," answered the other. "It may be as far as Montreal, or even to Quebec, if I get not satisfaction soon."
"I could not guide you as far as that," replied the boy; "but I know every step towards the lakes, as well as an Indian."
"With whom he is very fond of consorting," said his father, with a smile.
But before the conversation could proceed, an elderly, respectable woman-servant entered the room, and announced that supper was on the table. Edith had not returned; but they found her in a large, oblong chamber, to which the master of the house led the way. There was a long table in the midst, and four wooden chairs arranged round one end, over which a snowy table-cloth was spread. The rest of the table was bare. But a number of other seats, and two or three benches, were in the room, while at equal distances on either side, touching the walls, lay several bear-skins and buffalo-skins, as if spread out for beds.
The eye of the stranger glanced over them as he entered; but his host replied to his thoughts with a smile, saying--
"We will lodge you somewhat better than that, sir. We have, just now, more than one room vacant; but you must know there is no such thing as privacy in this land, and when we have a visit from our Indian friends, those skins make them supremely happy. I often smile to think how a red man would feel in Holland sheets. I tried it once, but it did not succeed. He pulled the blankets off the bed, and slept upon the floor."
When the companions were seated at table the conversation turned to many subjects, general, of course; yet personally interesting to both the elder members of the party--at least, so it seemed from the eagerness with which they discussed them. The state of the colonies was spoken of; the state of England; the relation of the two to each other; and the dangers which were then apprehended from the encroaching spirit of the French, who were pushing forward posts on every point of their frontier, into territories undoubtedly British. No mention was ever made of even the probability of the separation of England from her North American colonies; for at that time the idea had never entered into the imagination of any, except some of those quiet students of the past, who sometimes derive, from the very dissimilar history of former days, a foresight regarding the future, which partakes of, without being wholly, intuition, and whose warnings, like Cassandra's, are always scoffed at till the time for remedial action is passed. The danger to the British possessions in North America seemed, to the eyes of almost all men, to lie in the power, the eager activity, and the grasping spirit of France; and the little cloud of dissatisfaction, no bigger than a man's hand, which hung upon the horizon of British interests in the transatlantic world, was little supposed to forebode the storm and the earthquake which should rend the colonies from the mother-country. Alas, for man's calculations, and for his foresight! How rarely, how very rarely, do they penetrate below the surface of the present or the future!