"These," he said, "were furnished by Mr. Franklin, Postmaster-General of Pennsylvania, and he sends me only a hundred and fifty at that."
"A hundred too many," was George's thought.
The march was inconceivably slow. Never since George could remember had he had so much difficulty in restraining his temper as on that celebrated march. As he said afterwards, "Every mole-hill had to be levelled, and bridges built across every brook." General Braddock wished to march across the trackless wilderness of the Alleghanies as he did across the flat plains of Flanders, and he spent his time in constructing a great military road when he should have been pushing ahead. So slow was their progress that in reaching Winchester George was enabled to make a detour and go to Greenway Court for a few hours. The delight of Lord Fairfax and Lance was extreme, but in a burst of confidence George told them the actual state of affairs.
"What you tell me," said the Earl, gravely, "determines me to go to the low country, for if this expedition results disastrously I can be of more use at Williamsburg than here. But, my dear George, I am concerned for you, because you look ill. You are positively gaunt, and you look as if you had not eaten for a week."
"Ill!" cried George, beginning to walk up and down the library, and clinching and unclinching his fists nervously. "My lord, it is my heart and soul that are ill. Can you think what it is to watch a General, brave but obstinate and blind to the last degree, rushing upon disaster? Upon my soul, sir, those English officers think, I verily believe, that the Indians are formed into regiments and battalions, with a general staff and a commissary, and God knows what!" And George raved a while longer before he left to ride back to Winchester, with Billy riding after him. This outbreak was so unlike George, he looked so strange, his once ruddy face was so pallid at one moment and so violently flushed at another, that the Earl and Lance each felt an unspoken dread that his strong body might give way under the strain upon it.
George galloped back into Winchester that night. Both his horse and Billy's were dripping wet, and as he pulled his horse almost up on his haunches Billy said, in a queer voice:
"Hi, Marse George, d'yar blood on yo' bridle. You rid dat hoss hard, sho 'nough!"
"Hold your tongue!" shouted George, in a tone that Billy had never heard from him before; and then, in the next minute, he said, confusedly, "I did not mean to speak so, but my head is in a whirl; I think I must be ill."
And as he spoke he reeled in his saddle, and would have fallen had not Billy run forward and caught him. He staggered into the house where he had lodgings, and got into his bed, and by midnight he was raving with fever.
Billy had sense enough to go for Dr. Craik, George's old acquaintance, who had volunteered as surgeon to General Braddock's staff. He was a bright-eyed, determined-looking man, still young, but skilled in his profession. By morning the fever was reduced, and Dr. Craik was giving orders about the treatment as he sat by George's bedside, for the army was to resume its march that day.