The solemn peace in his eyes awed me; the ravage which care had left in his visage frightened me.
He spoke again:
"I may have to answer to Him soon, my boy. I have searched my heart; there is no dishonour in it."
We had been sitting on the bed in my little chamber. The window was open, the breeze fluttered the cotton curtains, a spicy breeze, laden with essence of the fern which covers our fields, and smells like bay-leaves crushed in one's palm.
The peace of Sabbath brooded over all, a cow-bell tinkled from the pasture, birds chirped. Sir William rose to stand by the window, and his gaze softened towards the sunlit meadows where buttercups swayed with daisies, and blue flower-de-luce quivered in the wind.
"God!" he muttered, under his breath. "That this sweet peace on earth should be assailed by men!"
Again into my breast came that strange uneasiness which this month of May had brought to us along with the robins and the new leaves, and which I began to breathe in with the summer wind itself—a vague unrest, a breathless waiting—for what?—I did not know.
And so it went on, Sir William and I walking sometimes alone together on the hill-sides, speaking soberly of that future which concerned our land and kin, I listening in silence with apprehension ever growing.
Often during that week came Mohawk sachems and chiefs of the Senecas and Onondagas to the Hall, pestering Sir William with petty disputes to judge between them. Sometimes it was complaint against drunken soldiers who annoyed them, sometimes a demand for justice, touching the old matters of the moonlight survey, in which one, Collins, did shamefully wrong the Mohawks by stealing land; and William Alexander, who is now Lord Sterling, and William Livingston did profit thereby—guiltily or innocently, I know not.
But these troubles Sir William settled impartially and with that simple justice which made fraud loathsome, even to frauds.