His Excellency quietly took up his cap, set it on his head, threw himself back in his seat, placed his elbows on the elbows of the chair, closed his palms together perpendicularly, moved them up and down before his lips, and with his eyes cast to the ceiling, entered upon this little calculation.
"Sixty miles. At the rate of fifteen miles a day, it will take Mr. Arnold four days to reach Levis. This is the seventh, is it not? Then, on the eleventh, we may expect that gentleman's visit."
"Arnold will make two forced marches of thirty miles each, Your Excellency, and arrive opposite this city in two days. This is the seventh; on the ninth, we shall see his vanguard on the heights of Levis."
"Ho! Ho! And is that the way the jolly rebel is carrying on? He must have had a wonderful run of luck all at once. The last we heard from him, his men had mutinied and were about to disband."
"That was because they were starving."
"And have they been filled, forsooth?"
"They have, sir."
"By whom?"
"By our own people at Sertigan and further along the Chaudière."
"But horses? They are known to have lost them all in the wilderness."