Some people think with effort, in others thoughts flow in a stream, and now as he sat with his back to a tree, much that he had thought and heard passed before him like a moving panorama and in this shifting belt of color Indians, Frenchmen, Colonials and Englishmen appeared.
He knew that he stood upon the edge of great events.

Deeply sensitive to impressions, he felt that a crisis in North America was at hand.

England and France were not yet at war, and so the British colonies and the French colonies remained at peace too, but every breeze that blew from one to the other was heavy with menace.

The signs were unmistakable, but one did not have to see.

One breathed it in at every breath.