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The houses were not much altered, but the signboards had got new names and figures; and as for the faces, they were to him even as those in Crete to the Cretan, after he awoke from a sleep of forty-seven years a similitude only true in this change, for Epimenidas was still as young when he awoke as when he went to sleep, but William Halket was old among the young and the grown, who were unknown to him, as he was indeed strange to them.
Certain it is, at least, that Halket having been taken into the counting-house on a raised salary, began "to lay by," as the Scotch call it; and by-and-by, with the help of a little money lent to him by his master, he began by purchasing produce from the neighbouring plantations, and selling it where he might, all which he did with advantage, yet with the ordinary result to a Scotsman, that while he turned to so good account the king's head, the king's head began to turn his own.
Sir Peter Halket, with his brigade, had marched three days previously; and a detachment of six hundred men, under the command of Colonel Chapman, and the supervision of Sir John St. Clair, had been employed upwards of ten days in cutting down trees, removing rocks, and opening a road. The march over the mountains proved, as Washington had foretold, a "tremendous undertaking."
"Peter Simon Halket, cry to the white men and women of South Africa: 'You have a goodly land; you and your children's children shall scarce fill it; though you should stretch out your arms to welcome each stranger who comes to live and labour with you. You are the twin branches of one tree; you are the sons of one mother.
Within a month this old man was on his way to Scotland, having sold the plantation, and taken bills with him to an amount of little less than a hundred thousand pounds. In the course of five weeks William Halket put his foot on the old pier of Leith, on which some very old men were standing, who had been urchins when he went away.
Peter Halket stood below the tree with the knife in his hand. The noise roused the whole camp: the men on guard came running; guns were fired: and the half-sleeping men came rushing, grasping their weapons. There was a sound of firing at the little tree; and the cry went round the camp, "The Mashonas are releasing the spy!"
He carried no weapon of any kind; and on his shoulders hung heavy locks of dark hair. Peter Halket looked up at him with astonishment. "Are you alone?" he asked. "Yes, I am alone." Peter Halket lowered his gun and knelt up. "Lost your way, I suppose?" he said, still holding his weapon loosely. "No; I have come to ask whether I may sit beside your fire for a while."
All there was likewise in confusion; for the Indians had extended themselves along the ravine so as to flank the reserve and carry slaughter into the ranks. Sir Peter Halket had been shot down at the head of his regiment. The men who should have served the guns were paralyzed. Had they raked the ravines with grapeshot the day might have been saved.
Accordingly, a party of a hundred men was ordered out to clear a road there, and worked to such purpose that at the end of two days an extremely good one was completed, falling into the road made by Major Campbell about a mile beyond the mountain. On the seventh, Sir Peter Halket and the Forty-Eighth marched, in the midst of a heavy storm, and at daybreak the next day it was our turn.
Peter Halket looked into the fire completely absorbed in his calculations. Peter Halket, Esq., Director of the Peter Halket Gold Mining Company, Limited. Then, when he had got thousands, Peter Halket, Esq., M.P. Then, when he had millions, Sir Peter Halket, Privy Councillor! He reflected deeply, looking into the blaze.
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