“Next year, sir, I shall be sixteen, and perhaps I shall not be my own master. I may be in his majesty’s service. But if I can come to you again, you may be sure I will.” When supper was over the earl drew his chair up to the fire, and, still wrapped in his fur mantle--for the bitter wind blew through the cracks and crannies of the cabin--sat in a reverie with his deep eyes fixed on the blaze. George had meant that night to ask him something about the siege of Bouchain, but he saw that the earl was deep in thought, and so said nothing. He began to wonder what his mother and Betty were doing at that time. It was after supper at Ferry Farm, too. His mother was knitting by the table in the parlor, with two candles burning, and Betty was practising at the harpsichord. In his mother’s bedroom--“the chamber,” as it was called in Virginia--a fire was burning, and around the hearth were gathered the household servants picking the seed from the cotton which, when warmed by the fire, came out easily. This they did while waiting until they were dismissed at nine o’clock. What was Billy doing? and Rattler? While thinking these thoughts George dropped asleep, and slept soundly until Lance waked him raking down the ashes and preparing for the night. Next morning George wakened early, as he supposed, seeing how dark it was; but the sound of the rain upon the roof proved that it was not so early, after all. He glanced through one of the two small windows of the cabin and saw the water coming down in torrents. A regular mountain storm was upon them. George sighed as he realized this. It meant weather-bound for several days, as the roads across the mountains would be likely to be impassable after such a storm. And so it proved. For four days there was only an occasional let up in the downpour. Luckily, no snow fell. And Lord Fairfax observed his young guest narrowly in these days of being cooped up in a cabin, and found him less impatient than might have been expected. George, seeing the elaborate preparations that Lance always made for the earl’s comfort, imagined that he would ill support the inconveniences of their enforced delay; but it proved exactly the contrary. Lord Fairfax was not only patient but gay under such annoyances as a leak in the roof and their rations being reduced to corn-bread and smoked venison. “It reminds me of our old days in the Low Countries,” he said to Lance the fourth night they spent at the cabin. “Yes, my lord; but, saving your honor’s presence, we would have thought this a palace in those days. I don’t think I ever was dry all over, and warm all over, and had as much as I could eat from the time I went to the Low Countries until after we had taken Bouchain, sir.” “Lance has told me about that adventure, sir,” said George, slyly, hoping to hear something more from Lord Fairfax about it.