"You almost make me wish, sir, that I had accepted the offer of Captain Whyte and had gone on to Louisbourg."
"Do not worry yourself. If you find Willet and Tayoga, as you will, you can reach Quebec long before Wolfe can achieve much. He hass yet to gather his forces and go up the St. Lawrence. Armies and fleets are not moved in a day."
"Do you know what Rogers' immediate duties are?"
"I do not, but I think he iss to help the movement that General Amherst is going to conduct with a strong force against Ticonderoga and Crown Point. Oh, Mr. Pitt hass a great plan as becomes a great man, and Canada will be assailed on all sides. I hear talk too that Rogers will also be sent to punish the St. Francis Indians who have ravaged the border."
They talked a while longer, and Robert listened, intent, eager. The burgher and the schoolmaster had the vision of statesmen. They were confident that England and the colonies would achieve complete success, that all defeats and humiliations would be wiped away by an overwhelming triumph. Their confidence in Pitt was wonderful. That sanguine and mighty mind had sent waves of energy and enthusiasm to the farthest limits of the British body politic, whether on one side of the Atlantic or the other, and it was a singular, but true, fact, that the wisest were those who believed in him most.
Mr. McLean went away, after a while, and Robert took a walk in the town, renewing old acquaintances and showing to them how one could really rise from the dead, a very pleasant task. Yet he longed with all his soul for the forest, and his comrades of the trail. His condition of life on the island had been mostly mental. It had been easy there to subsist. His physical activities had not been great, save when he chose to make them so, and now he swung to the other extreme. He wished to think less and to act more, and he shared with Mr. Huysman and Mr. McLean the belief that the coming campaign would win for England and her colonies a complete triumph.
He too thrilled at the name of Pitt. The very sound of the four letters seemed to carry magic everywhere, with the young English officers on the ship, in Boston, in Albany, and he had noticed too that it inspired the same confidence at the little towns at which they stopped on their way across Massachusetts. Like a blast on the horn of the mighty Roland, the call of Pitt was summoning the English-speaking world to arms. Robert little dreamed then, despite the words of Colonel Strong, that the great cleavage would come, and that the call would not be repeated until more than a century and a half had passed, though then it would sound around the world summoning new English-speaking nations not then born.
Rogers, the famous ranger, upon whom Tayoga had bestowed the name Mountain Wolf, arrived the next day, bringing with him fifty men whom he supplied with ammunition for one of his great raids. The rest of his band was waiting for him near the southern end of Lake George, and he could stay only a few hours in Albany. He gave Robert a warm welcome.
"I remember you well, Mr. Lennox," he said. "We've had some hard fighting together around Lake George against St. Luc, Tandakora and the others, but I think the battle line will shift far northward now. Amherst is going to swoop down on Ticonderoga and Crown Point, and Sir William Johnson, well of his wound, is to march against Niagara. I'll punish the St. Regis Indians for all their barbarities. Oh, it's to be a great campaign, and I'll tell you a secret too."
"What is it?" asked Robert.