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Then he reflected on what he should do with the land if it were no good and he could not make anything out of it. Then, he should have to start a syndicate; called the Peter Halket Gold, or the Peter Halket Iron-mining, or some such name, Syndicate. Peter Halket was not very clear as to how it ought to be started; but he felt certain that he and some other men would have to take shares.
They would not have to pay for them. And then they would get some big man in London to take shares. He need not pay for them; they would give them to him; and then the company would be floated. No one would have to pay anything; it was just the name "The Peter Halket Gold Mining Company, Limited."
"But if he curses you, and says, 'I have eight millions of money, and I care neither for God nor man! then make no answer, but stoop and write before him." The stranger bent down and wrote with his finger in the white ashes of the fire. Peter Halket bent forward, and he saw the two words the stranger had written.
"Mary," he continued, "Will Halket still lives. He was betrayed, as you have been betrayed. He wrote three letters to you, all of which were kept back by his master, for fear of losing one who he saw would be useful to him; and, to complete the conspiracy, he reported you dead upon the authority of Peter Ramsay.
In one of them he recognized, by a peculiarity of the teeth, the remains of his father, Sir Peter Halket, and in the other he believed that he saw the bones of a brother who had fallen at his father's side. The young officer fainted at the sight. The two skeletons were buried together, covered with a Highland plaid, and the Pennsylvanian woodsmen fired a volley over the grave.
Dreghorn had, for the sake of keeping him at Peach Grove, never forwarded the letters, whereto many circumstances tended. "And what did you do when you found Will had proved false?" inquired Halket. "Why should that have been your ruin?" "Because my puir heart was bound up in him," said she, "and I never could look upon another man. Then what could a puir woman do?
I've a great liking for Halket myself, he's a real good fellow, and he's done me many a good turn took my watch only last night, because I was off colour; I'd do anything for him in reason. But, I say this flatly, I couldn't and wouldn't fly in the face of the authorities for him or anyone else. I've my own girl waiting for me down in the Colony, and she's been waiting for me these five years.
Halket was released from his duty, and had come up, and lain down a little in the background of the group who gathered round their fire. The Colonial and the Englishman had given orders to all the men of their mess that Halket was to be left in quiet, and no questions were to be asked him; and the men, fearing the Colonial's size and the Englishman's nerve, left him in peace.
I tell you, Peter Simon Halket, that here on the spot where now we stand shall be raised a temple. Man shall not gather in it to worship that which divides; but they shall stand in it shoulder to shoulder, white man with black, and the stranger with the inhabitant of the land; and the place shall be holy; for men shall say, 'Are we not brethren and the sons of one Father?"
Of the animation which he felt at the prospect of serving in this long-desired campaign, and revisiting with an effective force the scene of past disasters, we have a proof in a short letter, written during the excitement of the moment, to Major Francis Halket, his former companion in arms. "My dear Halket: Are we to have you once more among us?
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