[Gutenberg 19223] • At War with Pontiac; Or, The Totem of the Bear: A Tale of Redcoat and Redskin

Excerpt from At War With Pontiac: Or the Totem of the Bear; A Tale of Redcoat and Redskin: *A glorious midsummer day was drawing to a close; its heat had passed; the tall forest trees, whose leaves were pleasantly rustled by the cool breeze of approaching night, flung a bridge of tremulous shadows across the surface of Loch Meg, and all nature was at peace. The tiny lake, though bearing an old-world name, was of the new world, and was one of the myriad forest gems that decked the wilderness of western New York a century and a half ago. It was embraced in a patent recently granted by the English king to his well-approved servant Graham Hester, whose bravery and wounds had won for him an honorable retirement, with the rank of major in a Highland regiment, ere he was forty years of age.*