Henry Conway.
His lordship looked at me as I put away the letters. I said: “That seems to me good sense; but about the general, I cannot credit it.”
“You will judge for yourself,” he said, “if this be the man to send into the wilderness. Keep the letters, but do not lose them; you may return them later.” Which I should have done, only that the rout on the Monongahela put it out of my mind.
XXXII
It was about noon when, as I have said, being in the rear of the Forty-eighth Foot, we heard a noise behind us. We drew up at the side within the wood to see what was coming.
Amid a great dust came General Braddock, in a fine red chariot bought of Governor Sharpe, with an escort of light horse, all in great haste, and bumping over the worst road possible. Presently they flew by the troops, who saluted, the drums beating the Grenadier’s March, a tune I was to hear again.
“If I were the general,” I said, “I should have preferred a horse to a coach.”
“Not if you were he,” said his lordship.
“But the man is not a fool,” I ventured to say. “He seemed to me not to want for intelligence.”