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On the contrary, he saw "a swarthy, smoke-dried little man, with scarcely enough of threadbare homespun to cover his nakedness, and instead of tall ranks of gay-dressed soldiers, a handful of sunburnt, yellow-legged militiamen, some roasting potatoes, and some asleep, with their black firelocks and powder-horns lying by them on the logs."
They wore fringed hunting-shirts, dyed yellow, brown, white, and even red; quaintly carved shot-bags and powder-horns hung from their broad ornamented belts; they had fur caps or soft hats, moccasins, and coarse woollen leggings reaching half-way up the thigh. Each carried his flint-lock, his tomahawk, and scalping-knife.
Two of them were rifles, of which one was much longer than the other: the third piece was a double-barrelled shot gun. Bullet-pouches and powder-horns hung from the muzzles of all three, their straps being suspended from the projecting ends of the rammers. On the opposite or leeward side of the tent a fire was burning. It had not been long kindled, and crackled as it blazed.
Their strong, gaunt horses were equipped with rusty Spanish bits and rude Mexican saddles, to which wooden stirrups were attached, while a buffalo robe was rolled up behind them, and a bundle of beaver traps slung at the pommel. These, together with their rifles, their knives, their powder-horns and bullet-pouches, flint and steel and a tincup, composed their whole traveling equipment.
He was ushered by Benoit, the elderly body-servant, rather grandiloquently called the seneschal, into the ground-floor room known traditionally as the library. It still contained several shelves of neglected volumes, from which it derived its title, but implements of the chase fowling-pieces, powder-horns, hunting-bags, sheath-knives obtruded far more prominently than those of study.
For three days I was hurried from place to place, and not a single thing that I liked to do did I do I was completely put out of my own way my ideas were forced into new channels. I heard of nothing but of fishing and fishing-tackle of the pleasures there would be in the shooting season of shooting-jackets, and powder-horns, and guns, and proof guns.
We had our rifles, and by good fortune a large stock of ammunition for, besides my own, Harry and Frank had powder-horns containing nearly a pound each. But this in time would be expended what then? Oh, what then? Before that I should find out some other mode of capturing our game. Besides, the valley might contain many other things intended to sustain life roots and fruits.
In these days, when all greatness is so carefully examined, he has to be used with greater moderation than formerly. The limit for his age is lower; trees, boats and powder-horns 'are safe from him, but nothing of stone which can be sat upon can escape him. And the children, the children of the day, treat him quite otherwise than their parents did. They criticise him openly and frankly.
A few minutes later Long-Hair returned bearing two guns, Beverley's and his own, the latter, a superb weapon given him by Hamilton. He afterward explained that he had brought these, with their bullet-pouches and powder-horns, to a place of concealment near by before he awoke Beverley.
The great white drawing-room with its wainscotings of the time of Louis XVI., which opened out upon a flight of steps leading down into a terraced garden; the portraits of obscure ancestors: lawyers in powdered wigs and wearing the robes of the members of the Third estate, fat and rosy with double chins resting upon their broad cravats, amiable old ladies with oddly arranged hair and flowered gowns, coquettish still as they smiled in their oval, wooden frames, and then the old books in their old-fashioned bindings slumbering in a great bookcase with glass doors, or piled up on shelves below the fowling-pieces, the game-bags and the powder-horns.
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