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Peter Halket half clasped his arms about his knees. "My master," he cried, "how can I take this message? The Dutchmen of South Africa will not listen to me, they will say I am an Englishman. And the Englishmen will say: 'Who is this fellow who comes preaching peace, peace, peace? Has he not been a year in the country and he has not a share in a single company?
The man opened his eyes slowly, without raising his head; and looked at Peter from under his weary eyebrows. Except that they moved they might have been the eyes of a dead thing. Peter put up his fingers to his own lips "Hus-h! hus-h!" he said. The man hung torpid, still looking at Peter. Quickly Peter Halket knelt down and took the knife from his belt.
I'd lie down here and go to sleep with my head at your feet; curious, isn't it, when I don't know you from Adam? My name's Peter Halket. What's yours?" But the stranger was arranging the logs on the fire. The flames shot up bright and high, and almost hid him from Peter Halket's view. "By gad! how they burn when you arrange them!" said Peter. They sat quiet in the blaze for a while.
Dreghorn died, leaving Halket as one of his trustees, for behoof of his wife, in whom the great plantation vested. If we add yet another lustrum, we find the Scot fortunate, save for one misfortune that made him a joyless worshipper of gold purchasing from the widow, who wished to return to England, the entire plantation under the condition of an annuity.
"I am not hungry now," he said. After a while he took out his red handkerchief, and emptied carefully into it the contents of the plate; and tied it up into a bundle. He set it beside him on the ground, and again lay on his elbow. "You won't come nearer to the fire, Halket? asked the Englishman. "No, thank you, the night is warm."
Give some shares to men with big names, and sell out: they can sell out too at the right time. Peter Halket stroked his knee thoughtfully. And then the other people, that bought the shares for cash! Well, they could sell out too; they could all sell out! Then Peter Halket's mind got a little hazy.
Nor with time, so deceptive, need we be so sparing in dealing out those periods of five years, but say at once that at last William Halket could count twelve of them since first he set his foot on Virginian soil; yea, he had been there for sixty summers, and he had now been a denizen of the world for seventy-eight years.
The stranger said: "Say to him: 'Though you should seek to make that name immortal in this land; and should write it in gold dust, and set it with diamonds, and cement it with human blood, shed from the Zambezi to the sea, yet ." The stranger passed his foot over the words; Peter Halket looked down, and he saw only a bed of smooth white ashes where the name had been.
* Sir Peter Halket, captain Lucy Scott, lieutenants Farquharson and Cumming, with a few other gentlemen, adhered punctually to their parole, and their conduct was approved by his majesty.
There was Captain Robert Orme, Braddock's aide-de-camp, a fine manly fellow, for whom he soon formed a reciprocal liking, and the son of Sir Peter Halket, a lieutenant, and Morris, an American, another aide-de-camp, and young William Shirley, the son of the governor of Massachusetts, who had become Braddock's secretary.
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