Lance was a genius in the way of making a camp comfortable. Although all of his experiences had been under entirely different circumstances, in an old and settled country with a flat surface, he was practical enough to transmute his knowledge to suit other conditions. He made no pretence of assisting in the field-work, but when George and William would come back to camp in the evenings, after a long day’s tramp on the mountains, Lance would always be ready with a good supper, a bed of pine or cedar branches, and an endless store of tales of life in other days and other places. In the absence of books, except the two volumes given George by Lord Fairfax, these story-tellings became a great resource to the two young fellows, and were established as a regular thing. Although Lance had been only a private soldier, and was not an educated man, he had natural military talents, and when they would talk about possibilities of war with the French upon the frontier, which was then looked upon as inevitable, Lance clearly foresaw what actually happened years afterwards. The military instinct was always active in George, and it developed marvellously. For recreation he and Lance devised many campaigns against the French and Indians, and proved, on paper at least, how easy it would be to capture every French fort and block-house from the Alleghanies to the Great Lakes. George had a provincial’s enthusiastic confidence in regular troops, and was amazed to find Lance insisting that their usefulness in a campaign in the wilderness was doubtful.