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{\LARGE\strut{A HERO OF TICONDEROGA}}
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This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the \hyperlink{project-gutenberg-license}{Project Gutenberg License}
included with this eBook or online at
{https://www.gutenberg.org/license}.
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\noindent
Title: A Hero of Ticonderoga
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\noindent
Author: Rowland E. Robinson
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\noindent
Release Date: January 25, 2011 {[}EBook \#35080{]}
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\noindent
Language: English
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Character set encoding: UTF-8
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*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A HERO OF TICONDEROGA ***
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Produced by Darleen Dove and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at {http://www.pgdp.net}.
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This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive.
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{\noindent}
{\bfseries{{\addfontfeature{Scale=1.2}{A HERO OF TICONDEROGA}}}}\par

By\par

{\addfontfeature{Scale=1.2}{Rowland E. Robinson}}\par

\vs{1}
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{\vl {\noindent}
Burlington, VT.\par}
{\vl Hobart J. Shanley \& Co.\par}
{\vl Publishers\par}
{\vl 1898\par}
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{\noindent}
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{\noindent}
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{\vl Copyright, 1898, by\par}
{\vl HOBART J. SHANLEY \& CO.\par}
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{\noindent}
Contents}

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\item[] {\noindent}
\hyperlink{chapter-icoming-into-the-wilderness}{CHAPTER I—COMING INTO THE WILDERNESS}\par

\item[] \hyperlink{chapter-iithe-new-home}{CHAPTER II—THE NEW HOME}\par

\item[] \hyperlink{chapter-iiia-visit-to-the-fort}{CHAPTER III—A VISIT TO THE FORT}\par

\item[] \hyperlink{chapter-ivthe-new-hampshire-grants}{CHAPTER IV—THE NEW HAMPSHIRE GRANTS}\par

\item[] \hyperlink{chapter-vthe-evergreen-sprig}{CHAPTER V—THE EVERGREEN SPRIG}\par

\item[] \hyperlink{chapter-vithe-yorkers}{CHAPTER VI—THE YORKERS}\par

\item[] \hyperlink{chapter-viithe-judgment-seat}{CHAPTER VII—THE “JUDGMENT SEAT”}\par

\item[] \hyperlink{chapter-viiia-novel-bear-trap}{CHAPTER VIII—A NOVEL BEAR TRAP}\par

\item[] \hyperlink{chapter-ixa-frontier-tragedy}{CHAPTER IX—A FRONTIER TRAGEDY}\par

\item[] \hyperlink{chapter-xrebellion}{CHAPTER X—REBELLION}\par

\item[] \hyperlink{chapter-xiescape}{CHAPTER XI—ESCAPE}\par

\item[] \hyperlink{chapter-xiia-free-life}{CHAPTER XII—A FREE LIFE}\par

\item[] \hyperlink{chapter-xiiiforebodings-of-storm}{CHAPTER XIII—FOREBODINGS OF STORM}\par

\item[] \hyperlink{chapter-xivgabriels-good-service}{CHAPTER XIV—GABRIEL’S GOOD SERVICE}\par

\item[] \hyperlink{chapter-xvleaders-and-guide}{CHAPTER XV—LEADERS AND GUIDE}\par

\item[] \hyperlink{chapter-xviticonderoga}{CHAPTER XVI—TICONDEROGA}\par

\item[] \hyperlink{chapter-xviihome-coming}{CHAPTER XVII—HOME COMING}\par
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{\noindent}
CHAPTER I—COMING INTO THE WILDERNESS}

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{\noindent}
The low sun of a half-spent winter
afternoon streaked and splashed the
soft undulations of the forest floor
with thin, infrequent lines, and scattered
blotches of yellow light among
the thickening shadows.\par

A solitary hunter, clad in buckskin
and gray homespun, thridded his way
among the gray trunks of the giant
trees, now blended with them and
their shadows, now briefly touched by
a glint of sunlight, now casting up the
powdery snow from the toes of his
snowshoes in a pearly mist, now in a
golden shower, yet moving as silently
as the trees stood, or shadows brooded,
or sunlight gleamed athwart
them.\par

Presently he approached a narrow
road that tunnelled, rather than
seamed, the forest, for the giant trees
which closely pillared its sides spread
their branches across it, leaving the
vast forest arch unbroken.\par

In the silence of the hour and season,
which was but emphasized by
the outcry of a suspicious jay and the
gentler notes of a bevy of friendly
chickadees, the alert ear of the hunter
caught a less familiar sound. Faint
and distant as it was, he at once recognized
in it the slow tread of oxen
and the creak of runners in the dry
snow, and, standing a little aloof from
the untrodden road, he awaited the
coming of the possibly unwelcome
invaders of the wilderness.\par

A yoke of oxen soon appeared,
swaying along at a sober pace, the
breath jetting from their nostrils in
little clouds that arose and dissolved
in the still air with that of their driver,
who stood on the front of a sled laden
with a full cargo of household stuff.
Far behind the sled stretched the
double furrow of the runners, deep-scored
lines of darker blue than the
universal shadow of the forest, a steadfast
wake to mark the course of the
voyager till the next snow-storm or
the spring thaw cover it or blot it out.
As the oxen came opposite the motionless
hunter, his attendant jay uttered
a sudden discordant cry.\par

“Whoa, hush! Whoa haw, there!
What are you afeard of now? That’s
nothin’ but a jay squallin’.” The
strong voice of the driver rang through
the stillness of the woods, overbearing
the monotonous tread of the oxen,
the creak of the sled, and the responsive
swish and creak of the snow beneath
feet and runners.\par

Unmindful of his voice, the oxen
still swerved from the unbeaten track
of the forest road and threatened to
bring the off runner against one of
the great trees that bordered it. The
driver sprang from his standing place,
and, running forward alongside the
cattle, quickly brought them to a halt
with a few reassuring words, and a
touch of his long, blue-beech gad
across their faces.\par

Looking into the woods to see what
had alarmed them, he became aware
of the man standing a little way off,
as motionless as the great tree trunks
around him. Seeing the oxen were
now under control, the latter advanced
a little and spoke in a low,
pleasant voice:\par

“I didn’t go to skeer your oxen,
stranger, and was standin’ still to let
’em pass, but thet jay squalled at me,
an’, lookin’ this way, I s’pose they
ketched a glimpse of my fur cap an’
took it for some varmint. Cattle is
always lookin’ for some sech, in the
woods. Your load’s all right, I hope,”
he said, coming into the road and
looking at the sled, which, though
tipped on some hidden obstruction,
was yet in no danger of upsetting its
freight.\par

“Why, you’ve got women an’ childern,”
and his face lighted up with
an expression of pleased interest.
“You’re comin’ in to make a pitch.
How far might you be goin’, stranger?”\par

“A little beyond Fort Ti, on this
side,” the driver of the oxen answered.
“I made a pitch there last year. My
name’s Seth Beeman, and I come from
Salisbury, Connecticut, and them on
the sled are my wife and children.”
Seth Beeman knew that, according to
the custom of the country and the
times, this information would presently
be required of him, and the
hunter, for such the stranger’s dress,
long gun and snowshoes proclaimed
him to be, had such an honest face
he did not hesitate to forestall the inevitable
questions.\par

“I want to know! A Beeman from
ol’ Salisbury,” cried the other. “An’
now I wonder if you be akin to my ol’
comrade in the Rangers, ’Zekiel Beeman?”\par

“My father’s name was Ezekiel,
and he served in Roger’s Rangers.”\par

“Give me your hand, friend,” cried
the hunter, drawing off his mitten
with his teeth, and extending his hand
as he came near to the other. “Well,
I never thought to meet an ol’ friend
here in these lonesome woods, to-day.
Yes, an ol’ friend, for that’s what a
son of ’Zekiel Beeman’s is to me,
though I never sot eyes on him afore.
You’ve maybe hearn him speak of
Job Carpenter? That’s my name.”\par

“Carpenter? Yes, the name sounds
familiar, but you know father wa’n’t a
man of many words and never told us
much of his sojerin’ days.”\par

“You’re right, he wa’n’t. We all
larnt to keep our heads shut when we
was a-scoutin’ an’ a loud word might
cost a man his’n an’ many another
life.”\par

Seth wondered how long since the
hunter had forgotten the lesson, yet
he noticed the voice of the other was
never high pitched and he never made
a sudden, abrupt movement.\par

“An’ so these is your wife an’ childern,
be they?” said Job, passing
toward the sled, whose occupants
were so muffled in bed-quilts and
blankets that nothing of their forms,
and but little of their features, were
visible.\par

“How dedo, marm. How dedo,
little uns. Tol’able comf’table, I
hope?”\par

Ruth Beeman answered his kind
salutation as audibly as she could out
of her mufflings, and the children, a
boy of twelve and a girl of three years
younger, stared at him with round,
wondering eyes.\par

“It’s a hard life that lies afore
women an’ children in this wilderness,”
he said to himself, and then,
in a louder tone: “Wal, I’m glad
you’re goin’ to be nigh the Fort.
There’s always a doctor there, an’ it’s
sort o’ protection, if the garrison be
reg’lars. Now, Seth, start up your
team, an’ I’ll boost on the sled till it’s
square on the road again.”\par

So saying, he set his shoulder to
one of the sled stakes, while Seth carefully
started the oxen forward. With
a heaving lurch and prolonged creak,
the sled settled upon evener ground
without disturbance of its passengers
or its burden of house gear and provisions,
which, till now, had hidden
from view of the hunter a gentle little
cow in lead close behind it.\par

“How far be we from the Fort?”
Seth asked.\par

“Nigh onto five mile,” the hunter
answered, after considering their
whereabouts a moment. “After a
spell you’ll come to a better road on
the ice of the crik, if you take the first
blazed path beyend here, to your left.
It’ll fetch you to my cabin, where
you’d better stop till morning, for you
can’t no ways git to your pitch till
long arter nightfall. I know where it
is, for I come across it, last fall, when
I was trappin’ mushrat up the crik.
My shanty’s the first thing in the shape
of a dwelling that you’ll come to, an’
can’t miss it if you foller the back
track of my snowshoes. It hain’t so
great, but it’s better’n no shelter, an’
you’re more’n welcome to it. Rake
open the fire an’ build you a rouster,
an’ make yourselves to home. I’ve
got some traps to tend to, but I’ll be
back afore dark,” and, almost before
they could thank him, he disappeared
among the trees.\par

Seth took his place upon the sled,
and, as it moved forward, the forest
again resumed its solemnity of silence,
that was rather made more apparent
than at all disturbed by the slight
sounds of the party’s progress. It
was a silence that their lonely journey
had long since accustomed them to,
but had not made less depressing, for,
in every waking moment, it reminded
Seth and his wife how every foot of
it withdrew them further from old
friends and old associations, and how
long and wearisome the days of its
endurance stretched before them.\par

The remainder of the day was made
pleasanter by the chance finding of a
friend in a strange land, and with a
prospect of spending a night under a
roof, for, however it might be, it could
but be better than the almost shelterless
bivouac that had many times been
their night lodging since they entered
the great Northern Wilderness, that,
within a few years, had become known
as the New Hampshire Grants.\par

More than once, when they had
fallen asleep with only the mesh of
netted branches between them and
the serene stars, they had been awakened
by the long howl of the wolves
answering one another, or by the appalling
scream of a panther. Then,
with frequent replenishment of the
fire, they had watched out the weary
hours till morning, alarmed by every
falling brand or sough of the breeze, or
resonant crack of frost-strained trees.\par

Seth looked eagerly for the promised
trail and was glad to discover the
blazed trees and the netted imprint of
snowshoes, that, if but briefly, as certainly,
identified the path. He turned
his oxen into the diverging road,
which, though narrow, gave ample
room for the sled. After a little it
led to the winding channel of a creek
crawling through a marsh, whose
looped and matted sedges were in
turn bordered by the primeval forest
and its bristling abatis of great trees,
prostrate and bent in every degree of
incline.\par

At last, as the long shadows began
to thicken into the pallid gloom of
winter twilight, a little cabin was discovered
in a notch of clearing, as gray
and silent as the gray woods around
it. A thin wisp of smoke climbed
from the low chimney against the wall
of forest, and a waft of its pungent
odor came to the travellers. Even as
they drew near, its owner also arrived,
and gave them hospitable welcome to
his hearth, and presently the little
room was aglow with light and
warmth.\par

Here Ruth and little Martha thawed
away their cramps and chilliness by
the big fireplace, while Seth and his
son Nathan, with the hunter’s help,
unhitched the oxen from the sled.
From this they brought the rations of
hay and corn, and made the oxen and
their comrade, the cow, contented
with their roofless lodging behind the
cabin.\par

Then the pork and Indian meal were
taken inside. Ruth mixed a johnny-cake
with hot water and salt, and set
it to bake on its board, tilted before
the fire. The frying-pan was filled
with pork, and slices of moose meat
contributed from Job’s larder.\par

The little party, ranged on rude
seats about the fireplace, so great as
to be out of all proportion to the
room, chatted of things near and afar,
while they grew hungry with every
sniff of appetizing cookery.\par

Nathan was all agog at the peltry
that hung from innumerable pegs on
the rough log walls. There were skins
of many animals that had long been
rare, if not extinct, in the old colony
where he was born.\par

There were the broad, round shields
of beaver skins, the slenderer and
lighter-hued skins of otters, besides
the similarly shaped but smaller and
darker-colored fisher, with a bundle of
the lesser martins, that Job called
“saple,” and no end of muskrats and
minks. There were, also, half a dozen
wolf skins, and, conspicuous in size
and glossy blackness, were three bear
skins, and beside them hung a tawny
panther hide, the huge hinder paws
and long tail trailing on the puncheon
floor, while the cat-like head seemed
to prowl, as stealthily as in life, among
the upper shadows and flickerings of
the firelight.\par

Quickly noting the boy’s interest
in these trophies, Job made the round
of them all, explaining the habits of
each animal, the method of its capture,
and giving brief narrations
of encounters with the larger ones.
He exhibited, with the most pride,
a beautiful silver-gray foxskin, and
an odd-looking spotted and coarse-haired
skin, stuffed with moss into
some semblance of its form in the
flesh. This he brought to the fireside,
and set on its fin-like hinder
feet, for the inspection of his guests.\par

“What on airth is it?” Seth Beeman
asked.\par

“’Tain’t of the airth, but of the
water,” Job answered, with a chuckle.
“I killed it on the ice of the lake
airly in the winter. One of the sojers
at the Fort see it, an’ he says it’s a
seal fish belongin’ to the sea, where
he’s seen no end on ’em. But them
sojers to the Fort is an ign’ant set like
all the reg’lars, that we rangers always
despised as bad as they did us, an’ it
don’t look no ways reasonable that
sech a creatur’ could come all the way
up the St. Lawrence, an’ the Iriquois
River, an’ most the len’th o’ this lake.
My idee is, it’s a fresh-water maremaid,
an’ nat’ral to this lake.”\par

If Seth had any doubt of this
theory, he gave it no expression, and
the hunter went on:\par

“An ol’ Injin told me that there’s
always ben one o’ these cretur’s seen
in this lake a spell afore every war
that’s ever ben. But I hope the sign’ll
fail this time. I’ve seen enough
o’ war an’ I don’t see no chance of
another, all Canady bein’ took an’ the
Injins in these parts bein’ quilled.”\par

The johnny-cake, having been baking
for some time in its last turn on
the board, was now pronounced done.
The mixed contents of the frying-pan
were turned out on a wooden trencher,
and conversation was suspended for
the more important matter of supper.
Not long after this was disposed of,
the host and his guests betook themselves
to sleep in quilts and blankets
on the puncheon floor, with their feet
to the blazing backlog and glowing
bed of coals.\par

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CHAPTER II—THE NEW HOME}

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{\noindent}
The light of a cloudless March morning
pervaded the circumscribed landscape
when the inmates of the cabin
were astir again. Not many moments
later, a sudden booming report broke
the stillness and rolled in sullen echoes
back and forth from mountains and
forested shores.\par

“The sunrise gun to Fort Ti,” Job
said, in reply to the questioning look
of his guests. “They hain’t no other
use for their powder now.”\par

A fainter report, and its fainter answering
echoes, boomed through the
breathless air.\par

“An’ that’s Crown P’int Fort, ten
mile furder down the lake. They
help to keep us from getting lonesome
up here in the woods.” And, indeed,
there was a comfortable assurance of
human neighborhood and helpful
strength in these mighty voices that
shook the primeval forest with their
dull thunder.\par

“I don’t sca’cely ever go nigh
the forts,” Job continued. “I don’t
like them reg’lars an’ their toppin’
ways.”\par

After fortifying themselves with a
breakfast, in no wise differing from
their last meal, the travellers set forth
on the last stage of their journey, Job
volunteering to accompany them upon
it, and see them established in their
new home. They had not gone far
on their way down the narrow channel
of the creek when it brought them to
the broad, snow-clad expanse of the
lake, lying white and motionless between
its rugged shores, bristling with
the forest, save where, on their left,
was a stretch of cleared ground, in the
midst of which stood, like a grim sentinel,
grown venerable with long years
of steadfast watch, the gray battlements
of Fort Ticonderoga.\par

Here and there could be seen red-coated
soldiers, bright dots of color in
the colorless winter landscape, and,
above them, lazily flaunting in the
light breeze, shone the red cross of
England. The old ranger gave the
flag the tribute of a military salute,
while his heart swelled with pride at
sight of the banner for which he had
fought, and which he had followed
almost to where it now waved, in the
humiliation of Abercrombie’s defeat,
and here had seen it planted in Amherst’s
triumphant advance.\par

In Seth Beeman’s breast it stirred
no such thrill. It had no such associations
with deeds in which he had
borne a part, and to him, as to many
another of his people, it was becoming
a symbol of oppression rather than an
object of pride. To Nathan’s boyish
eyes it was a most beautiful thing,
without meaning, but of beauty. His
heart beat quick as the rattling drums
and the shrill notes of the fife summoned
the garrison to parade.\par

The oxen went at a brisker pace on
the unobstructed surface of the lake,
and the travellers soon came to a little
creek not far up which was the clearing
that Seth Beeman had made during
the previous summer. In the
midst of it stood the little log house
that was henceforth to be their home,
the shed for the cattle, and a stack of
wild hay, inconspicuous among log
heaps almost as large as they, looking
anything but homelike with the
smokeless chimney and pathless approach.
Nor, when entered, was the
bare interior much more cheerful.\par

A fire, presently blazing on the
hearth, soon enlivened it. The floor
was neatly swept with a broom fashioned
of hemlock twigs by Job’s ready
hands. The little stock of furniture
was brought in. The pewter tableware
was ranged on the rough corner
shelves. Ruth added here and there
such housewifely touches as only a
woman can give. The change, wrought
in so brief a space, seemed a magical
transformation. What two hours ago
was but a barren crib of rough, clay-chinked
logs, was now a furnished
living-room, cozy with rude, homelike
comfort.\par

Then the place was hanselled with
its first regularly prepared dinner, the
first meal beneath its roof at which a
woman had presided. Job, loath to
leave the most humanized habitation
that he had seen for months, set forth
for his own lonely cabin. Except the
unneighborly inmates of the Fort,
these were his nearest neighbors, and
to them, for his old comrade’s sake,
he felt a closer friendship than had
warmed his heart for many a year.\par

Though it was March, winter lacked
many days of being spent in this latitude,
and, during their continuance,
Seth was busy with his axe, widening
the clearing with slow, persistent inroads
upon the surrounding forest, and
piling the huge log heaps for next
spring’s burning. Nathan gave a willing
and helpful hand to the piling of
the brush, and took practical lessons
in that accomplishment so necessary
to the pioneer—the woodsman’s craft.
Within doors his mother, with little
Martha for her companion, plied cards
and spinning-wheel, with the frugal
store of wool and flax brought from
the old home. So their busy hands
kept loneliness at bay, even amid the
dreariness of the wintry wilderness.\par

At last the south wind blew with a
tempered breath. Hitherto unseen
stumps appeared above the settling
snow, the gray haze of woods purpled
with a tinge of spring, and the caw of
returning crows pleased their ears,
tired of the winter’s silence.\par

Seth tapped the huge old maples
with a gouge, and the sap, dripping
from spouts of sumac wood, was
caught in rough-hewn troughs. From
these it was carried in buckets on a
neck-yoke to the boiling place, an
open-fronted shanty. Before it the
big potash kettle was hung on a tree
trunk, so balanced on a stump that it
could be swung over or off the fire at
will. Sugaring brought pleasure as
well as hard labor to Nathan. There
were quiet hours spent in the shanty
with his father, with little to do but
mend the fire and watch the boiling
sap walloping and frothing, half hidden
beneath the clouds of steam that
filled the woods with sweet odor.\par

Sometimes Job joined them and
told of his lonely scouts in the Ranger
service, and of bush fights with Indians
and their French allies, and of
encounters with wild beasts, tales
made more impressive in their relation
by the loneliness of the campfire,
with the circle of wild lights and
shadows leaping around it in the edge
of the surrounding darkness, out of
which came, perhaps from far away,
the howl of a wolf or the nearer hoot
of the great horned owl.\par

Sometimes Martha spent part of a
day in camp with her brother, helping
in womanly ways that girls so early
acquired in the training of those
times, when every one of the household
must learn helpfulness and self-reliance.
But the little sister enjoyed
most the evenings when the syrup
was taken to the house and sugared
off. The children surfeited themselves
with sugar “waxed” on snow,
and their parents, and Job, if he
chanced to be there, shared of this
most delicious of the few backwoods
luxuries, and the five made a jolly
family party.\par

One morning, when the surface of
the coarse-grained old snow was covered
with one of the light later falls,
known as “sugar snow,” as Seth and
his son were on their way to the sugar
place, the latter called his father’s
attention to a large track bearing
some resemblance to the imprint of a
naked human foot, and tending with
some meandering in the same direction
that they were going.\par

“Why,” said Seth, at the first
glance, “it’s a bear, an’ if he’s been
to the camp, I’m afraid he’s done mischief,
for they’re meddlesome creatur’s.
But there wa’n’t much left
there for him to hurt,” he added,
after taking a brief mental inventory
of the camp’s contents.\par

“I can’t think of nothing but the
hunk of pork we had to keep the big
kittle from b’ilin’ over,” said Nathan,
“and a little mite of syrup that we
left in the little kittle ’cause there
was more’n we could carry home in
the pails.”\par

“He’s welcome to that if he’s left the
pork; we hain’t no pork to feed bears.”\par

Now, as they drew near the camp,
they heard a strange commotion in
its neighborhood; a medley of smothered
angry growls, impatient whines,
unwieldy floundering, and a dull thud
and clank of iron, the excited squalling
of a party of jays, and the chattering
jeers of a red squirrel. Running
forward in cautious haste, they presently
discovered the cause of this odd
confusion of noises to be a large black
bear.\par

His head was concealed in the pot-bellied
syrup kettle, held fast in that
position by the bail, that, in his eagerness
to lick out the last drop of stolen
sweet, had slipped behind his ears.
His frantic efforts to get rid of his
self-imposed muzzle were so funny
that, after their first moment of bewilderment,
the two spectators could
but shout with laughter.\par

Now upreared, the blindfolded bear
would strike wildly at the kettle with
his forepaws; then, falling on his back,
claw it furiously with his hinder ones;
then, regaining his feet, rush headlong
till brought to a sudden stand by an
unseen tree trunk. Recovering from
the shock, he would remain motionless
for a moment, as if devising some
new means of relief, but would presently
resume the same round of unavailing
devices, with the constant
accompaniment of smothered expressions
of rage and terror.\par

But there was little time for laughter
when a precious kettle and a fat
bear might at any moment be lost by
the fracture of one and the escape of
the other. Seth had no weapon but
his axe, but with this he essayed
prompt attack, the happy opportunity
for which was at once offered. In one
of his blind, unguided rushes, the bear
charged directly toward the camp, till
his iron-clad head struck with a resounding
clang against the great boiling
kettle. As he reeled backward
from the shock, half stunned by it,
and bewildered by the unaccustomed
sound that still rang in his ears, Seth
was beside him with axe uplifted.\par

Only an instant he deliberated where
and how to strike; at the skull he
dared not with the axe-head, for fear
of breaking the kettle, and he disliked
to strike with the blade further back
for fear of disfiguring the skin. But
this was the preferable stroke, and in
the next instant the axe-blade fell with
a downright blow, so strong and well
aimed that it severed the spinal column
just forward of the shoulders.
The great brute went down, paralyzed
beyond all motion, to fall in a helpless
heap and yield up his life with a
few feeble gasps.\par

“Oh, father,” cried Nathan, the
first to break the sudden silence, with
a voice tremulous in exultation, “to
think we’ve got a bear. Won’t mother
and Marthy be proud? and won’t
Job think we’re real hunters?”\par

Waiting but a moment to stroke the
glossy fur and lift a huge inert paw,
but such a little while ago so terrible,
he sped home to bring his mother and
sister to see the unexpected prize,
while the jays renewed their querulous
outcry, and the squirrel vociferously
scoffed the fallen despoiler of his stolen
nuts.\par

The flesh made a welcome addition
to the settler’s scanty store of meat,
the fat furnished a medium for frying
the hitherto impossible doughnut, and
Job promised to bring them a handsome
price for the skin, when he
should sell it with his own peltry to
the fur traders. But the praise he
bestowed upon Seth’s coolness in the
strange encounter was sweeter to
Nathan than all else.\par

As the days went on the advance of
spring became more rapid and more
apparent. Already the clearing was
free from snow, and even in the
shadow of the forest the tops of the
cradle knolls showed the brown mats
of last year’s leaves above the surface,
that was no longer a pure white, but
littered with the winter downfall of
twigs, moss, and bits of bark, and
everywhere it was gray with innumerable
swarming mites of snow fleas.
Great flocks of wild geese harrowed
the sky. Ducks went whistling in
swift flight just above the tree tops,
or settled in the puddles beginning to
form along the border of the marsh.
Here muskrats were getting first sight
of the sun after months of twilight
spent beneath the ice.\par

In the earliest April days of open
water, when the blackbirds, on every
bordering elm and water maple, were
filling the air with a jangle of harsh
and liquid notes, and the frogs, among
the drift of floating weeds, were purring
an unremitting croak, Job took
Nathan out on the marshes, and instructed
him in the art of shooting
the great pickerel now come to spawn
in the warm shallows.\par

“Never shoot at ’em,” said he,
when a shot from his smooth-bore had
turned an enormous fellow’s white
belly to the sun, and he quickly lifted
the fish into the canoe; “if you do,
you won’t hit ’em. Always shoot
under, a mite or more, accordin’ to
the depth o’ water.”\par

Powder and lead were too precious
to waste much of them on fish, so the
old hunter made his pupil a hornbeam
bow and arrows with spiked heads.
With these weapons the boy soon became
so skilled that he kept the table
well supplied with this agreeable variation
of its frugal fare.\par

Song-birds came in fewer numbers
in those days of wide wildernesses
than now, but there were bluebirds
and song sparrows enough to enliven
the clearing with sweet songs, and
little Martha found squirrel cups
blooming in the warmest corners of
the field. As the days grew longer
and warmer they grew busier, for Seth
was diligently getting his crops in
among the black stumps.\par

Job, having foreseen his friend’s
need of some sort of water craft when
the lake should open, had fashioned
for him a log canoe from the trunk of
a great pine, and modelled it as gracefully
as his own birch, though it was
many times a heavier, as it was a
steadier, craft.\par

One pleasant afternoon in early
May, when the lake was quite clear
of ice, Seth and his son, with Job as
their instructor in the art of canoe
navigation, made a trip in the new
boat. They paddled down the creek,
now a broad bit of water from the
spring overflow. When they came
to the lake, rippled with a brisk northern
breeze, they found their visit well
timed, for a rare and pretty sight was
before them, so rare and pretty that
Job paddled back with all speed for
the mother and daughter that they,
too, might see it.\par

A mile below the mouth of the
creek a large vessel was coming, under
all sail, with the British flag flying
bravely above the white cloud
of canvas. They could hear the inspiring
strains of martial music, and,
when the noble vessel swept past not
half a mile away, they could see the
gayly dressed officers and the blue-jacketed
sailors swarming on her
deck.\par

“It’s the sloop from St. Johns,”
said Job. “She comes two or three
times, whilst the lake’s open, with
stores for the garrison to the Fort.
It’s an easier trail than the road from
Albany. Pretty soon you’ll hear her
speak.”\par

Almost at his words a puff of smoke
jetted out from her black side, and,
as it drifted across her deck, it was
followed by the loud, sullen roar of the
cannon. In response a smoke cloud
drifted away from the Fort, and a moment
later a roar of welcome reinforced
the failing echoes. Again and
again the sloop and the Fort exchanged
salutes, till the new settlers
ceased to be startled by such thunder
as they had never before heard under
a cloudless sky.\par

“They hain’t nothin’ to do with
their powder nowadays, but to fool it
away in sech nonsense,” said the
Ranger, as the sloop came to anchor
in front of the Fort. “Arter all it’s
a better use for it than killin’ folks,
erless,” he deliberately excepted, “it
might be Injins.”\par

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CHAPTER III—A VISIT TO THE FORT}

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{\noindent}
The summer brought more settlers
to these inviting lands of level, fertile
soil, and when the woods were again
bright with autumnal hues, their broad
expanse of variegated color was
blotched with many a square of unsightly
new clearing. Job Carpenter
looked with disfavor upon such infringement
of the hunter’s domain,
but it was welcomed by the Beemans.
Though Seth’s active out-door employment
and the constant companionship
of nature made him less lonely
than his wife, yet he was of a social
nature and glad of human companionship;
while Ruth, sometimes lonely in
the isolation of her new home, rejoiced
in the neighborhood of other women.\par

Only a mile away were the Newtons,
a large and friendly family, and
within three miles were four more
friendly households, and another at
the falls of the turbid Lemon Fair.
At this point a saw mill was being
built and a grist mill talked of. With
that convenience established so close
at hand, there would be no more need
of the long journey to the mill at
Skeenesborough, a voyage that, in the
best of weather, required two days to
accomplish.\par

The settlers at first pounded their
corn into samp, or finer meal for johnny-cake,
by the slow and laborious
plumping mill, a huge wooden mortar
with a spring pole pestle.\par

“Oh, mother,” said Nathan, one
summer afternoon, as for a while he
stopped the regular thump, thump of
the plumping mill to wipe his hot face
and rest his arms that ached with the
weary downpull of the great pestle,
“when do you s’pose the folks to the
Fair will get the gris’ mill done?”\par

“Afore long, I hope, for your sake,
my boy,” she answered, cheerily,
through the window. “Let me spell
you awhile and you take a good rest.”\par

Laying her wool cards aside, she
came out and set her strong hands to
the pestle, while Nathan ran out to
the new road to see what ox-teamster
of unfamiliar voice was bawling his
vociferous way along its root-entangled
and miry course. Presently the boy
came back, breathless with the haste
of bearing great news.\par

“Oh, mother, they’re carryin’ the
stones and fixin’s for the new mill,
and the man says they’ll be ready for
grindin’ before winter sets in. Then
it’ll be good-by to you, old ’Up-an’-down,’
and good riddance to bad rubbage,”
and he brought the pestle
down with energy on the half-pounded
grist of samp.\par

“Don’ revile the plumpin’ mill,
Nathan. It’s been a good friend in
time o’ need. Mebby you’ll miss the
trips to Skeenesborough with your
father. You’ve always lotted on
them.”\par

“Yes, but I’d rather go to the Fort
and play with the boys, any day, and
I’ll have more time when samp poundin’
is done and ended.”\par

He had been with his father twice
to the Fort to see its wonders, and,
brief as the visits were, they sufficed
to make him acquainted with the boys
of the garrison, and, for the time, a
partner in their games. Before the
summer was out, the little Yankee became
a great favorite with the few
English and Irish boys whose fathers
were soldiers of the little garrison.
He taught them how to shoot with
his hornbeam bow and spiked arrows,
and many another bit of woodcraft
learned of his fast friend Job, while
they taught him unheard-of games,
and told him tales of the marvellous
world beyond the sea, a world that
was as a dream to him.\par

His Yankee inquisitiveness made
him acquainted with every nook and
corner of the fortification, and he was
even one day taken into the commandant’s
quarters, that the beautiful
wife of that fine gentleman might see
from what manner of embryo grew
these Yankees, who were becoming
so troublesome to His Majesty, King
George. She was so pleased with his
frank, simple manner and shrewd answers
that she dismissed him with a
bright, new English shilling, the largest
sum that he had yet possessed.\par

“Really, William,” she afterwards
remarked to her husband, “if this be
a specimen of your terrible Yankees,
they be very like our own people, in
speech and actions, only sharper witted,
and they surely show close kinship
with us in spite of such long
separation.”\par

“You little know them,” said Captain
Delaplace, laughing. “They are
a turbulent, upstart breed. I fear
only a sound drubbing, and, perhaps,
the hanging of a score of their leaders,
will teach them obedience to His
Majesty.”\par

“I would be sorry to have this little
man drubbed or hanged,” said she,
with a sigh; “surely he is not of the
stuff rebels are made of.”\par

“The very stuff, my dear. Bold
and self-reliant, and impatient of control,
as you may see. If ever there
comes an outbreak of these discontented
people, I warrant you’ll find
this boy deserving the drubbing and
getting it, too, for His Majesty’s
troops would make short work of
such rabble.”\par

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CHAPTER IV—THE NEW HAMPSHIRE GRANTS}

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{\noindent}
A year later, the dispute of the Governors
of New York and New Hampshire,
concerning the boundaries of
the two provinces, was at its height,
and the quarrel between claimants of
grants of the same lands, under charters
from both governors, became
every day more violent. The disputed
territory was that between the
Connecticut River and Lake Champlain,
and was for a long time known
as the New Hampshire Grants.\par

If a New York grantee found the
claim which he had selected, or which
had been allotted to him, occupied by
a New Hampshire grantee, when the
strength of his party was sufficient he
would take forcible possession of the
land, without regard to the improvements
made upon it, and without
making any compensation therefor.
He was seldom left long in enjoyment
of possession thus gained, for the
friends of the New Hampshire grantee
quickly rallied to his aid and summarily
ousted the aggressor, who, if
he proved too stubborn, was likely to
be roughly handled, and have set upon
his back the imprint of the beech seal,
the name given to the blue-beech rod
wherewith such offenders were chastised.
The New Hampshire grantees
were as unscrupulous in their ejectment
of New York claimants who had
first established themselves on the New
Hampshire Grants. Surveyors, acting
under the authority of New York,
were especially obnoxious to settlers
of the other party, and rough encounters
of the opposing claimants were
not infrequent. Seth Beeman and
his neighbors had all taken up land
under a New Hampshire charter, without
a thought of its validity being
questioned.\par

One bright June morning, Nathan
was watching the corn that, pushing its
tender blades above the black mould
in a corner of the clearing, offered
sweet and tempting morsels to the
thieving crows. It was a lazy, sleep-enticing
occupation, when all the
crows but one, who sat biding his
opportunity on a dry tree top, had
departed, cawing encouragement to
one another, in quest of a less vigilantly
guarded field. There was no
further need for beating with his improvised
drumsticks on the hollow
topmost log of the fence, to the tune
of “Uncle Dan, Uncle Dan, Uncle
Dan, Dan, Dan,” which would not
scare the wise old veteran from his
steadfast waiting.\par

The indolent fluting of the hermit
thrushes rang languidly through the
leafy chambers of the forest, and the
wood pewees sang their pensive song
on the bordering boughs, too content
with song and mere existence to chase
the moth that wavered nearest their
perch. The languor of their notes
pervaded all the senses of the boy,
and, with his body in the shade of the
log fence and his bare feet in the sunshine,
he fell into a doze.\par

Suddenly he was awakened by an
alarmed outcry of the crow, now
sweeping in narrow circles above some
new intruder upon his domain. Then
he became aware of strange voices,
the tramp of feet, the swish of branches
pushed aside regaining their places, a
metallic clink, and occasional lightly
delivered axe strokes. Mounting the
topmost log of the fence, and shading
his eyes with his hands, he peered into
the twilight of the woods. To this
his eyes had hardly accustomed themselves,
when he saw what sent flashes
of anger and chills of dread chasing
one another through his veins. But
a few rods away, and coming towards
him, were two men, one bearing the
end of a surveyor’s chain and a bundle
of wire rods, the other carrying an axe
and gun. A little behind these were
two men similarly equipped, and still
further in the rear, half hidden by the
screen of undergrowth, more figures
were discovered, one of whom was
squinting through the sights of a compass,
whose polished brass glittered in
a stray sunbeam. Nathan was sure
this must be the party of the New
York surveyor of whom there had
been a rumor in the settlement, and
he felt that trouble was at hand.\par

“Hello, here’s a clearin’,” the foremost
man, as he ran to the fence,
called back to the one at the other
end of the chain. “Jenkins, tell Mr.
Felton there’s a fenced clearin’ here,—and
boy,” now deigning to notice
so insignificant an object.\par

“Stake,” cried Jenkins.\par

As the first speaker planted one of
the wire rods beside the fence, Jenkins
pulled up the last one stuck in the
woods, at the same time shouting the
news back to the surveyor.\par

“Hold on, boy,” the first speaker
said, as Nathan jumped from the
fence. “You stay here till Mr. Felton
comes up.”\par

“I’m going home,” Nathan answered
boldly; “if Mr. Felton wants
me he can come there.”\par

“You sassy young rascal,” cried
one of the men, who carried a gun,
bringing his weapon to a ready; “you
stand where you be or I’ll—” and he
tapped the butt of his gun impressively.\par

“You wouldn’t dast to,” Nathan
gasped defiantly, but he went no
further, and stood at bay, grinding
the soft mold under his naked heel
while he cast furtive glances at the
intruders, till the remainder of the
party came up. The surveyor, impressed
with the dignity of his position,
maintained a haughty bearing
toward all the members of his party
save one, a swarthy, thick-set, low-browed
man, whom he addressed as
Mr. Graves.\par

“A fine clearing, indeed,” said Mr.
Felton when he came to the fence.
“I wonder what Yankee scoundrel
has dared to so seize, hold and occupy
the lands of the Royal Colony of New
York.”\par

“Mayhap this younker can tell you,
sir,” said the man guarding the boy,
and lowering his gun as he spoke.\par

“Boy, what scoundrel has dared to
steal this land and establish himself
upon it without leave or license of His
Excellency, the Governor of New
York? Yes, and cut down the pine
trees, especially reserved for the masting
of His Majesty’s navy,” and he
tapped the top log impressively.\par

“It’s holler, Mr. Felton,” Jenkins
suggested, satisfying himself of the
fact by a resonant thump of his axe.\par

“Who stole this land? Where’s
your tongue, boy?” Mr. Felton demanded
sharply.\par

But the boy, out of mind an instant,
in that instant was out of sight.
Many a time he had heard Job recount
the manner of retreat practised
by the Rangers, and now the knowledge
served him well. While the surveryor’s
party was engaged with the
pine, he slipped down on the same
side of the fence, gained the veiling of
a low bush, wormed his way a few
feet along the ground, reached the
protection of a large tree trunk, when
he leaped to his feet, and, fleet and
noiseless as a Ranger himself, fled
from tree to tree in a circuitous route
to his father.\par

Seth Beeman was hard at work on
an extension of his clearing to the
westward when Nathan came up,
panting and breathless.\par

“Oh, father, there’s a whole lot of
Yorkers come and they’re runnin’ a
line right through our clearin’.”\par

Seth listened attentively until the
men and their work had been described
minutely, and then, without a word,
resumed the trimming of the great
hemlock he had just felled. As
Nathan waited for some response, he
knew by his father’s knitted brow that
his thoughts were busy. At length,
breaking off a twig of hemlock, he
came to his son and said, handing the
evergreen to him:\par

“Take this to Newton’s and show
it to the men folks, and say ‘There’s
trouble to Beeman’s,’ and then go on
and do the same at every house,
’round to Job’s, and show it to him
and tell him the‘ same, and do whatever
he tells you. Be spry, my boy;
I must stay here and ta’ care of mother
and Sis. Keep in the woods till you
get clear of the Yorkers, then take the
road and clipper.”\par

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CHAPTER V—THE EVERGREEN SPRIG}

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{\noindent}
Understanding the importance of
his errand and guessing its purpose,
Nathan skulked stealthily along the
heavily-wooded border of the highway
till past all chance of discovery,
when he took the easier course of the
road. The ecstatic melody of the
thrushes’ song and the pensive strain
of the pewee had not changed, yet
now they were instinct with cheer and
acceleration, as was the merry drumbeat
of the flicker on a dry branch
overhead.\par

Presently, as he held his steady
pace, splashing through puddles and
pattering along firmer stretches, he
heard sharp and loud footfalls in rapid
approach. Before his first impulse to
strike into the ready cover of the
woods was carried into effect, a horseman
galloped around the turn, and he
was face to face with a handsome
stranger, whose tall, well-knit figure,
heightened by his seat on horseback,
towered above the boy like a giant.\par

“Hello,” said the man, reining up
his horse, “and where are you bound
in such a hurry, and who might you
be?” His clear gray eyes were fixed
on Nathan, who noticed pistols in the
holsters, a long gun across the saddle
bow, and, in the cocked hat, a sprig
of evergreen.\par

“I’m Seth Beeman’s boy,” Nathan
answered, pointing in the direction of
his home, “and I’m goin’ to neighbor
Newton’s of an arrant.”\par

“Ah,—Beeman,—a good man, I’m
told. And what might take you to
neighbor Newton’s in such a hurry?
Has that hemlock twig in your hand
anything to do with your errand?”
demanded the stranger, in an imperative
but kindly voice. “Speak up.
You need not be afraid of me.”\par

Nathan looked up inquiringly at
the bold, handsome face smiling down
on him.\par

“Did you ever hear of Ethan Allen?”
asked the stranger.\par

“Oh, yes; only yesterday father
told about Ethan Allen’s throwing the
Yorker’s millstones over the Great
Falls at New Haven.”\par

“Right and true! Well, I am
Ethan Allen.” As he gave his name
in a deep-toned voice of proud assurance,
it seemed in itself a strong host.
“Your father sent you with that twig
to say there’s trouble at Beeman’s,
didn’t he?”\par

Nathan looked up in wonder, admiration,
and gladness, and then, with
the instinctive, unreasoned confidence
that the famous chieftain of the Grants
was wont to inspire, told unreservedly
his father’s troubles and directions.
When Allen had heard it, he wheeled
his horse beside the nearest stump
and bade Nathan mount behind him.\par

“My horse’s feet will help you make
your rounds quicker than yours, my
man. We’ve no time to lose, for
there’s no telling what those scoundrels
may be at. Eight Yorkers!
Well, we’ll soon raise good men
enough to make short work of them.”\par

Nathan mounted nimbly to his assigned
place, and, clasping as far as he
could the ample waist of his new
friend, was borne along the road at a
speed that soon brought them to the
log house of the Newtons. A man of
the herculean mould so common to the
early Vermonters came out of the
house to meet the comers, with an
expression of pleased surprise on his
good-humored face.\par

“Why, colonel, we wa’n’t expectin’
on you so soon, but we hain’t no less
glad to see you. ’Light and come in.
Mother’ll hev potluck ready to rights.
Why, is that the Beeman boy stickin’
on behind you? Anything the matter
over to Beeman’s?”\par

“No, we can’t ’light,” Allen replied;
and then, looking down over
his shoulder, “Do your errand, my
boy, and we’ll push on.”\par

Nathan held out the carefully kept
sprig of evergreen and repeated his
message.\par

“Trouble to Beeman’s, now.”\par

“Yea, verily,” said Allen to Newton,
whose face flashed at the boy’s
words. “Rise up and gird on your
swords, you and your sons. The
Philistines are upon you even as it
has been prophesied. Felton and his
gang of land thieves. The son of
Belial was warned to depart from the
land of the elect, but he heeds not
those who cry in the wilderness. Confound
the rascal! He must be
‘viewed’! You and your two boys
take your guns and jog down that
way, and as you go cut a goodly
scourge of blue beech, for verily there
shall be weeping and wailing and
gnashing of teeth. We’ll rally the
Callenders, and Jones, and Harrington,
and North, and my friend Beeman
here will tell Job. We’ll gather
a good dozen. Enough to mete out
the vengeance of the Lord to eight
Yorkers, I’ll warrant!”\par

Strange and abrupt as were the transitions
from Allen’s favorite Scriptural
manner of speech to the ordinary vernacular,
no one thought of laughing.
As the boy dismounted, Allen said:\par

“You go straight to Job and do as
he tells you;” and as he rode away
called back, “everybody lay low and
keep dark till you hear the owl hoot.”\par

Soon Nathan turned from the road
into an obscure footpath that led in
the direction of Job Carpenter’s cabin.
The gloom and loneliness of the mysterious
forest, through which the narrow
footpath wound, so pervaded it
that the song birds seemed awed to
silence, and the woodpeckers tapped
cautiously, as if afraid of being heard
by some enemy. No boy, even of
backwoods breeding, would care to
loiter had his errand been less urgent,
and he gave but a passing notice to
things ordinarily of absorbing interest.\par

A mother partridge fluttered along
the ground in simulated crippledness
while her callow brood vanished among
the low-spread leaves. A shy wood
bird disclosed the secret of her nest
as he sped by. Against a dark pine
gleamed the fiery flash of a tanager’s
plumage. A wood mouse stirred the
dry leaves. His own foot touched a
prostrate dead sapling, and the dry
top rustled unseen in the wayside
thicket. There was a sound of long,
swift bounds, punctuating the silence
with growing distinctness, and a hare,
in his brown summer coat, wide-eyed
with terror, flashed like a dun streak
across the path just before him, and
close behind the terrified creature a
gray lynx shot past, eager with sight
and scent of his prey, closing the distance
with long leaps. Before the
intermittent scurry of footfalls had
faded out of hearing they ceased, and
a wail of agony announced the tragical
end of the race. The cry made him
shiver, and he could but think that
the lynx might have been a panther
and the hare a boy.\par

His heart grew lighter when he saw
the sunshine showing golden green
through the leafy screen that bordered
the hunter’s little clearing. He found
Job leaning on his hoe in his patch of
corn, looking wistfully on the creek,
where the fish were breaking the surface
among the weeds that marked
the expanse of marsh with tender
green, and where the sinuous course
of the channel was defined by purple
lines of lily pads. The message was
received with a show of vexation, and
the old man exclaimed:\par

“Plague on ’em all with their
pitches and surveyin’ and squabblin’.
Why can’t folks let the woods alone?
There’s room enough in the settlements
for sech quarrels without comin’
here to disturb God’s peace with bickerin’s
over these acres o’ desart. I
thought I’d got done wi’ wars and
fightin’s, exceptin’ with varmints,
when the Frenchers and Injins was
whipped. But I guess there won’t
never be no peace on airth and good
will to men for all it’s ben preached
nigh onto eighteen hundred years.
Plague on your Hampshire Grants and
your York Grants, the hul bilin’!
Wal, if it must come it must, and I’ll
be skelped if I’ll see Yorkers a runnin’
over my own Yankee kin. Yorkers
is next to Reg’lars for toppin’
ways. I never could abear ’em.”\par

While he spoke he twirled Nathan’s
hemlock sprig between his fingers and
now set it carefully in the band of his
hat and led the way to his cabin.\par

“And Ethan Allen’s in these betterments?
Well, them Yorkers’ll
wish they’d stayed to home. He’s
hard-handed, is Ethan.”\par

The two were now in the cabin, and
Job set forth a cold johnny-cake and
some jerked venison that Nathan
needed no urging to partake of.
“’Tain’t your mother’s cookin’, but
it’s better’n nothin’,” Job said, as
between mouthfuls he counted out a
dozen bullets from a pouch and put
them in his pocket. Then he held up
his powder horn toward the light after
giving it a shake, and, being satisfied
of its contents, slung it over his shoulder.
Their hunger being satisfied, he
took the long smooth-bore from its
hooks, examined the flint, and, nodding
to Nathan to follow, went down
to his canoe, that lay bottom up on
the bank.\par

“It’s quicker goin’ by water’n by
land,” said Job, as he set the canoe
afloat and stepped into it, while
Nathan took his place forward. Impelled
by the two paddles, the light
craft went swiftly gliding down the
creek, and then northward, skirting
the wooded shore of the lake.\par

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CHAPTER VI—THE YORKERS}

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{\noindent}
Though the presentation of claims,
under the authority of the New York
government, to the land which Seth
Beeman occupied by virtue of a title
derived from the Governor of New
Hampshire, had for some time been
expected and resistance fully determined
upon, Seth’s heart was as hot
with anger and heavy with anxiety as
if invasion had come without warning.
Tenacious of his rights, he yet hated
strife and contention. Nor could he
foresee whether he must lose the
home he had wrought with toil and
privation out of the savage wilderness,
or whether, after a sharp, brief
contest, he would be left in peaceable
possession of it, or whether he could
then hold it only by continued resistance.\par

Nathan had not been long away
when he shouldered his axe and hastened
toward the house. When it
came in view, between the tall pillars
of tree trunks that paled the verge of
the clearing, the rough-walled dwelling
had never looked more homelike
nor better worth keeping. It had
overcome the strangeness of new occupancy
and settled to its place. The
logs had begun to gather again the
moss that they lost when they ceased
to be trees. Wild vines, trained to
tamer ways, clambered about the doorway
and deep-set windows, beneath
which beds of native and alien posies,
carefully tended, alike flourished in
the virgin soil. The young garden
stuff was promising, and the broader
expanse of fall-sown wheat, grown
tall enough to toss in the wind, made
a rippling green sea of the clearing,
with islands of blackened stumps jutting
here and there above the surface.
The place had outgrown its uncouth
newness and transient camp-like appearance
and become a home to cling
to and defend.\par

“What is it, Seth?” asked Ruth,
coming to greet him at the door, her
smile fading as she saw his troubled
face.\par

“The Yorkers have come.” And
then he explained Nathan’s mission.
“Our folks’ll come to help as soon as
they can, but the Yorkers’ll get here
first. Look a there,” and, following
his eyes, Ruth saw the surveyor’s
party approaching the border of the
clearing, just as the Beemans passed
into the house.\par

“It won’t come to that, will it?”
she asked, in a low, awed voice, as
Seth took down his gun.\par

“I hope not, but I want the gun
out of their reach and where I can get
it handy. There ain’t a bullet or
buckshot in the house,” he declared,
after examining the empty bullet
pouch. “Give me some beans.
They’re good enough for Yorkers.”\par

As he spoke he measured a charge
of powder into the long barrel, rammed
a tow wad upon it, poured in a half
handful of the beans that Ruth
brought him in a gourd, rammed down
another wad, put priming in the pan,
clapped down the hammer, then
mounted half way up the ladder that
served as a stair, laid the gun on the
floor of the upper room, and was
down at the door when the surveyor
led his party to it. He saluted the
party civilly, and, upon demand, gave
his name.\par

“Well, Mr. Beeman,” began the
surveyor, in a pompous tone, “I sent
your son to bring you to me, but it
seems you did not please to come.”\par

“No,” said Seth quietly; “it does
not please me to leave my affairs at
the beck and call of every stranger
that comes this way.”\par

“Well, sir, I’d have you understand
that I am Marmaduke Felton,
duly appointed and licensed as a surveyor
of His Majesty’s lands within
his province of New York. Furthermore,
be it known, I have come
here in the regular discharge of the
duties of my office, to fix the bounds
of land purchased by my client, Mr.
Erastus Graves,” bowing to the person,
“of the original grantees, with
patent from His Excellency the Governor,
who alone has authority to
grant these lands. I find you, sir,
established on these same lands belonging
to my client. What have you
to say for yourself? By what pretended
right have you made occupation
of lands belonging to my client?”\par

“I have to say for myself,” Seth
answered, in a steady voice, “that I
bought this pitch of the original proprietors,
and I have their deed, duly
signed and sealed. They got their
charter of His Excellency Benning
Wentworth, His Majesty’s Governor
of the Province of New Hampshire.”\par

“Your title is not worth the paper
it’s written on,” scoffed Mr. Felton.
“Governor Wentworth has no more
authority to grant lands than I have.
Not a whit. The east bounds of New
York are fixed by royal decree at the
west bank of Connecticut River, as
everybody knows, and Wentworth’s
grants this side that limit are null and
void. No doubt you have acted in
good faith, but now there’s nothing
for you but to vacate these betterments
forthwith; yes, forthwith, if
you will take the advice of a friend,”
and the little man regaled himself with
a pinch of snuff.\par

“I shall not go till I am forced to,”
Seth answered with determination.
“When it comes to force both parties
may take a hand in the game.”\par

“Very well, very well! I have
given you friendly advice; if you do
not choose to take it the consequences
be on your own head. Come, Graves;
come, men, let us go about our present
affairs;” adding, after some talk
with Graves, “We shall be back to
spend the night with you, Mr. Beeman.
You cannot refuse Mr. Graves
the shelter of his own house.”\par

Seth flushed with anger, but answered
steadily: “I can’t help it, but
you will not be welcome.”\par

The men who had been idling about,
taking little interest in the parley,
now followed their employers back
to the woods, trampling through the
young wheat in their course.\par

“I wish you a pleasant night on’t,”
said Seth under his breath, and turned
to reassure his wife. “Don’t be frightened,
my girl. They won’t get us
out of here. Keep a stout heart and
wait.”\par

With a quieter heart she went about
her household affairs, while her husband
busied himself nearby, weeding
the garden and giving to his wife’s
posy beds the awkward care of unaccustomed
hands. He often stopped
his employment to listen and intently
scan the border of the woods. The
shadows of the trees were stretching
far across the clearing when an owl
hooted solemnly in the nearest woods
on the bank of the creek, and, presently,
another answered farther away.\par

“Do hear the owls hootin’, and it’s
clear as a bell,” said Ruth at the
door, looking up to the cloudless sky.
“It can’t be it’s a-going to storm.”\par

“I shouldn’t wonder if it did,” said
Seth with a mirthless laugh. “Where
was that nighest hoot?”\par

As he spoke the solemn hollow
notes were repeated, and some crows
began to wheel and caw above the
spot, marking it plainly enough to
the eye and ear, and he set forth in
the direction at a quick pace.\par

“Why don’t Nathan come home?”
little Martha asked. “I hain’t seen
him all day. I wish he’d come. He’ll
get ketched in the storm.”\par

“Oh, don’t worry, deary,” said her
mother after she had watched her
husband disappear in the thickening
shadow of the woods. “We might
as well eat, for there’s no telling when
father’ll be back.” They were not
half through the meal before he came,
and, as he took his seat at the table,
he said with a deep sigh of relief:
“I’m afeard our York friends won’t
enjoy their lodgin’s overmuch. The
owls are round pretty thick to-night.”\par

“Well, I guess they’ve ben talking
to you,” said Ruth, as her face lighted
with a comprehension of his meaning.\par

“Can owls talk?” Martha asked,
agape with wonder.\par

“Well, the old knowing ones. Owls
are turrible knowing creatur’s,” her
father said.\par

The twilight possessing the woods
had scarcely invaded the clearing when
the surveyor and his party came to
the house, bringing in blankets, provisions,
guns, tools, and instruments,
till the one small room was crowded
with them and the uninvited guests.
Felton and Graves made themselves
offensively and officiously at home.
The cook took possession of the fire,
and set two frying-pans of pork sputtering
grease upon the tidy hearth, to
the disgust of the housewife, who sat
with her husband and child in a dark
corner. At last Felton brought forth
a bottle of spirits from his leathern
portmanteau and drank to Graves.\par

“Here’s to your speedy installment
in your rightful possessions. Now,
help yourself, and give the men their
tot.”\par

Graves stood filling his measure of
grog in the tin cup, grinning with
satisfaction, when a loud knock came
on the door.\par

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CHAPTER VII—THE “JUDGMENT SEAT”}

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{\noindent}
Without waiting to be bidden, a
man of massive mould entered the
room. He strode into the firelight,
and, wheeling on the hearth, faced the
company, his shadow filling half the
room.\par

“Good evening, gentlemen. Good
evening, Mr. Felton and Graves.”\par

The latter stood with the untasted
dram half way to his gaping mouth,
the other was as motionless, save as
his face expressed successively astonishment,
anger, and exultation.\par

“Colonel Ethan Allen,” he said at
last, emphasizing the title. “Most
happy to receive a call from so distinguished
a person. A very fortunate
meeting.” Then changing his tone
of mock politeness to one of command:
“You are my prisoner. Men,
lay hold of him! A hundred pounds
are offered for his head! It is Ethan
Allen! Lay hold of him, I tell you!”\par

There was a reluctant stir among
the men. One advanced toward the
corner near the fireplace where the
guns were set. With deliberate celerity
Allen drew his hands from the
skirts of his coat, a cocked pistol in
each, and, with one of them, he covered
the man skulking towards the
guns.\par

“The first man that draws a pistol
or raises a gun gets a bullet through
his carcass,” he said with authority.\par

At Allen’s first words Seth had
mounted the ladder and as quickly
reappeared with his gun. The movement
was seen in the dancing shadows,
and he was covered by the other pistol,
which was lowered as he was distinguished
to be helping a woman and
child to mount to the chamber.\par

“Down with your gun over there!
Oh, it is our friend Beeman! All
right!” Then Allen called in a voice
that made the pewter dishes ring on
their shelves:\par

“Come in, men!”\par

The door swung violently open, and
Job Carpenter, with all the arms-bearing
men of the wide neighborhood, to
the number of a dozen, came marching
in, in Indian file, with rifle or
smooth-bore at a trail. In the rear
was Nathan, unarmed, but eager to
see all that should transpire.\par

Felton and Graves lost their bold
demeanor, yet held their places, while
their men slunk to the farther side of
the room in dumb affright, save Jenkins,
the cook, who, dodging this side
and that of Allen’s burly form, hovered
near his frying-pans in a divided
fear for his own safety and that of his pork.\par

“Keep every one of these men
under close guard, my boys,” Allen
commanded, “especially these two
chief offenders. Now, Mr. Felton,
perhaps it is made plain to you that I
am not your prisoner, and that the
gods of the valleys are not the gods of
the hills. Behold how riches take to
themselves wings and fly away even
before they are possessed. In witness
whereof, consider the hundred pounds
offered by your Governor for an honest
man. No wonder he longs for the
sight of one, with such a pack of
thieves and land jobbers as he has
about him.”\par

“An honest man?” cried Felton,
trembling with rage. “A ruffian! A
rioter! A defier of law!” and he
poured forth a torrent of opprobrious
names, and a full measure of curses,
till out of breath.\par

“Go on, Master Felton, go on,”
said Allen, smiling benignly upon
him. “Ease yourself. Unless it be
prayer, which you rarely employ, I
doubt, there is nothing like good
round cursing to relieve an overburdened
heart. Upon occasion I avail
myself of the remedy. Pray go on, or
give your friend a chance. Mr. Graves,
you have the floor,” but the man addressed
only glowered savagely.\par

“Well, if you have offered all your
burnt offerings of brimstone, let the
men have their supper and make
themselves strong for their journey.
Dish up the pork, cook, that you have
been bumping my legs to get at, and
bring out your bread bag. Stir yourselves.
We have weighty business
pending.”\par

The men ate their meat and bread
with the appetite of those whom no
emotion can cheat of a meal, but Felton
and Graves would have none of it.
The Green Mountain Boys sat apart,
chatting in low tones, till the smokers
were filling their pipes after their
meal, when Allen rapped the table
with the butt of his pistol, and his
clear, deep voice broke the silence
that ensued.\par

“Friends of the Grants, you all
know we have come here to erect the
‘Judgment seat’ this night, and mete
out such punishment as doth unto
justice appertain. Yea, verily, for
wrongs done or sought to be done
upon the people of these New Hampshire
Grants. We will at once elect a
judge. To save time, I will nominate
Ethan Allen as a proper person for
that office. You that would elect him
say ‘Aye.’”\par

There was a unanimous affirmative
response, even Nathan, proud of the
opportunity of giving his first vote,
made his piping treble heard among
the deep voices of the men.\par

“Contrary minded, make the usual
sign.”\par

There was only a sullen “No” from
Felton.\par

“You are not entitled to vote in this
meeting, sir. I have a clear majority
and will take my seat.” So saying,
Allen seated himself upon the table.\par

“The plain facts of the case are
these: This Mr. Felton and this
Graves, also, were taken by me, and
certain other good men, about one
month ago, in the act of surveying,
under the pretended authority of the
tyrannical New York government,
lands already granted by His Excellency
Benning Wentworth, His Majesty’s
duly appointed Governor of
New Hampshire. The said persons
were ordered to desist from such unlawful
business and to depart from
these Grants, and were duly warned
not to return for a like purpose under
pain of being ‘Viewed.’ Furthermore,
they were suffered to depart
without bodily harm. Here the surveyor
comes again, like a bad penny
as he is, bearing the King’s mark, but
a base counterfeit none the less. And
this Graves pretends to own this pitch
by right of purchase under York government.
Other than them I do not
recognize any among this crew who
have been ‘Warned.’ Now, friend
Beeman, tell us your story.”\par

Seth told what had passed between
him and the surveyor, and then Nathan
was called to relate his meeting the
party in the woods, which he did in a
straightforward manner, except for his
boyish bashfulness.\par

“Now, you have it all. Felton and
Graves are here, as you see, in prosecution
of their unlawful business, as
the testimony of this boy and his
father shows. In further proof whereof,
see the surveyor’s instruments
here in view. What say you, men of
the Grants, are they guilty or not
guilty?”\par

“Guilty,” said the various voices.\par

“What shall be their punishment?
That they be chastised with the twigs
of the wilderness?”\par

There was general affirmative response,
some answering loudly, others
faintly and hesitatingly. Then Job
Carpenter stepped forward, and, making
a military salute, said:\par

“I don’t go agin these men a gittin’
what they desarve, but I don’t
want to have them skinned. Their
skins hain’t worth a-hevin’ only for
their selves, and I hate to see white
men whipped like dogs. If they was
Injins I wouldn’t say agin it. But,
bein’ they hain’t, I move they hev jest
nine cuts o’ the Blue Beech apiece.”\par

“Forty, save one,” was the customary
award in such cases, and there
were a few dissenting voices, but the
milder punishment was finally agreed
upon.\par

If the two men under sentence felt
any gratitude for the mitigation of
the severity, they expressed none.
Graves maintained a sullen silence,
though his vengeful scowl expressed
as much hatred of the prosecutors of
the informal trial as did the storm
of oaths and abuse that Felton let
forth upon them in intermittent gusts.\par

So the night passed, with snatches
of sleep for some, with none for others,
while the prisoners were kept under
constant guard. With daylight came
the summary infliction of the punishment
awarded. It was a scene so
cruel that Ruth and Martha could not
bear to hear, much less to witness it,
and Nathan, when an old man, said
it was a horrible memory. Yet, severe
as was the chastisement inflicted by
the Green Mountain Boys upon their
persecutors, it was no more cruel than
the legal punishment of many light offences
in those days, when the whipping
post was one of the first adornments
of every little hamlet. In
conclusion, Ethan Allen gave to Felton
and Graves a “Certificate,” written
by himself, to the effect:\par

“This is to Certify that the Bearer
has this day rec’d his Just Dues and
is permitted to pass beyond the New
Hampshire Grants. He Behaving as
Becometh. In witness whereof, see
the Beech Seal upon his back and our
Hands set Hereunto. Signed, Ethan
Allen and others.”\par

Felton cast his upon the ground and
stamped upon it, but Graves folded
and put his carefully in his pocket,
glowering in silence upon his enemies.
Then Ethan Allen broke the surveyor’s
compass with his own hands and
tossed the fragments away.\par

“Now,” said he, in an awful voice,
“depart, and woe be unto you, Marmaduke
Felton and Erastus Graves,
if you ever set foot in the land of the
Green Mountain Boys. You other
men, if you come in peace and on
honest business, you shall not have a
hair of your heads hurt. But if you
ever venture to come on such an iniquitous
errand as now brought you,
by the Great Jehovah, you shall repent
in sackcloth and ashes! Forward,
march!”\par

At the command, the surveyor and
his men filed off, and the last of the
sullen and chap-fallen crew soon disappeared
among the trees. They
were accompanied some distance by
the Green Mountain Boys, when their
beloved chieftain rode away to redress
wrongs of settlers in other parts.\par

By noon the clearing was occupied
by none but its usual tenants, and,
henceforth, though they suffered frequent
apprehension of further trouble,
they were not molested by any New
York claimants.\par

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CHAPTER VIII—A NOVEL BEAR TRAP}

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{\noindent}
“You don’t know of anybody hereabouts
that wants to hire a good hand,
I s’pose?” asked a stranger one August
afternoon, as, without unslinging his
pack, he set his gun against the log
wall beside the door, and leaned upon
his axe at the threshold.\par

By degrees Seth Beeman had enlarged
his clearing so far that he
already needed stronger hands than
Nathan’s to help him in the care of
the land already in tilth and in the
further extension of his betterments,
but he scanned the man closely before
he answered. Though unprepossessing,
low-browed, and surly looking,
he was evidently a stout fellow, and
accustomed to work. At length a
reply was made by asking such questions
as were a matter of course in
those days, and are not yet quite
obsolete in Yankeeland.\par

The stranger readily said his name
was Silas Toombs, that he was from
Jersey way, and wished, when he had
earned enough, to take up a right of
land hereabouts, in a region he had
often heard extolled by his father,
who had served here in Captain Bergen’s
company of Rogers’s Rangers.
Seth had previously ascertained that
no grown-up son of any of his neighbors
could be spared to help him, so
he finally hired this man, who proved
to be efficient and faithful, although
not a genial companion, such as an
old-time farmer wished to find in his
hired help. Ruth treated him with
the kindness so natural to her, though
she could scarcely conceal her aversion.
This, if he understood, he did
not seem to notice any more than he
did the undisguised dislike of Nathan.\par

The remainder of the summer and
half of the fall passed uneventfully,
till one day, when Ruth had been
called to the bedside of Mrs. Newton,
who was ill of the fever so prevalent
in new clearings, Nathan and his sister
were left in charge of the house, while
their father and hired man worked in
a distant field.\par

The children spent half the pleasant
forenoon in alternate rounds of housework
and out-door play, now sweeping
the floor with hemlock brooms,
now running out into the hazy October
sunshine to play “Indians” with
Nathan’s bow and arrows and Martha’s rag doll.
This was stolen and
carried into captivity, from which it
was rescued by its heroic little mother.
Then they threw off their assumed
characters and ran into the house to
replenish the smouldering fire, and
to find that the sunshine, falling upon
the floor through the window, was
creeping towards the “noon mark,”
making it time to begin dinner.\par

Nathan raised the heavy trap-door
to the cellar and descended the ladder,
with butcher knife and pewter plate,
to get the pork, but had barely got
the cover off the barrel when he was
recalled to the upper world by a loud
cry from his sister:\par

“Nathan, Nathan, come here
quick!”\par

He scrambled up the ladder and
ran to her, where, just outside the
door, she was staring intently toward
the creek.\par

“Who be them?” she asked anxiously,
as she pointed at two figures
just disclosed above the rushes, as
they moved swiftly up the narrow
channel in an unseen craft.\par

“I guess they’re Injins,” said
Nathan, after a moment’s scrutiny,
“and I guess they’re a-trappin’ mushrat.
Let’s run over to the bank and
see.”\par

So they ran to the crown of the low
bank, where they could command a
good view of the rushy level of the
marsh, and the narrow belt of clear
water that wound through it, reflecting
the hazy blue of the sky, the tops
of the scarlet water maples, the bronze
and yellow weeds, and, here and there,
the rough dome of a newly built muskrat
house. At each of these the two
men, now revealed in a birch canoe,
halted for a little space, and then,
tying a knot in the nearest tuft of
sedge, passed on to the next. There
was no mistaking the coppery hue of
the faces, the straight black hair,
though men of another race might
wear the dirty, white blanket coats,
and as skilfully manage the light
craft.\par

“Yes, they be Injins,” said Nathan,
“and I wish they’d let my mushrat
alone. But I s’pose there’s enough
for them and me.”\par

Presently the Indians passed quite
near them, and one, speaking so softly
that the children thought his voice
could never have sounded the terrible
war-whoop, accosted them:\par

“How do? You Beenum boy?”\par

“Yes,” Nathan answered; and
then, obeying the Yankee instinct of
inquiry, asked: “Be you gettin’ many
mushrat?”\par

“No ketch um plenty,” the Indian
replied. “Ol’ Capenteese ketch um
mos’ all moosquas,” and Nathan understood
that he attributed the scarcity
of muskrats to Job, whose fame as a
hunter and trapper was known to
every Waubanakee who visited this
part of the lake.\par

“Me come back pooty soon,” the
Indian said, pointing up the creek
with his paddle. “Den go house, see
um Beenum. Buy um some pig eese.%
\footnotemark[1]\footnotetext[1]{Pork
}
S’pose he sell um lee’l bit?”\par

Nathan nodded a doubtful assent,
and then, reminded of dinner-getting
by the mention of pork, caught Martha’s
hand and hurried homeward,
while the Indians resumed their way
upstream.\par

When the children entered the open
door, they were for a moment dumb
with amazement at the confusion that
had in so short a time usurped the
tidiness whereof they had left the
room possessed. The coverlets and
blankets of one bed were dragged from
their place, two or three chairs were
overturned, and the meal barrel was
upset and half its contents strewn
across the floor.\par

“What in tunket,” cried Nathan,
when speech came to his gaping
mouth. “Has that old sow got outen
the pen?” Then he saw in the scattered
meal some broad tracks that a
former adventure had made him familiar
with, and he heard a sound of
something moving about in the cellar.\par

“It’s a bear,” he cried, “and he’s
down cellar.”\par

As quick as the thought and words,
he sprang to the open hatch, and
heaved it upright on the hinges, to
close it. But just as it hung in midway
poise, the bear, alarmed by
the noise overhead, gave a startled
“whoof,” and came scrambling up
the ladder. His tawny muzzle was
above the floor, when Nathan, with
desperate strength, slammed down the
hatch, and its edge caught the bear
fairly on the neck, pressing his throat
against the edge of the hatchway.
The trap door had scarcely fallen
when the quick-witted boy mounted
it and called to his frightened sister
to mount beside him, and with their
united weight, slight as it was, they
kept him from forcing his way upward,
till in his frantic struggles he
dislodged the ladder and hung by the
neck helpless, without foothold.\par

The children held bravely to their
post, hand in hand, while to the gasping
moans of the angry brute succeeded
cries of anger, that were in
turn succeeded by silence and loss of
all visible motion but such as was
imparted to the head by the huge
body still slowly vibrating from the
final struggle. When this had quite
ceased they ventured off the trap door,
and, pale and panting, they stood
before the ghastly head as frightful
now in death, with grinning, foam-flecked
jaws, protruding tongue, and
staring, bloodshot eyes, as it had been
in living rage. Nathan caught his sister
in his arms and hugged her, shouting:\par

“We’ve killed him. We’ve killed
a bear,” while she, in the same breath,
laughed and cried, till they both bethought
themselves of the dinner-getting
not yet begun.\par

“I can’t get down cellar,” said
Nathan, “for I dasn’t open that door.
What be we goin’ to do?”\par

A grunt of surprise caught his attention,
and, looking up, he saw the two
Indians at the door, staring with
puzzled faces on the strange scene.
Then one, with a hatchet half uplifted,
cautiously approached the grim head,
which, after an instant’s scrutiny, he
touched with his hatchet and then
with his finger.\par

“He dead. You boy do dat?”
And Nathan told him all the adventure.
The Indian gave the boy an
approving pat on the head that made
Nathan’s scalp shiver.\par

“You big Nad-yal-we-no. Too
much good for be Pastoniac. You
come ’long me to Yam-as-ka, I make
you Waubanakee. Den be good for
sometings. Nawaa,” he said to his
companion, and the other coming in,
the two reached down and laid hold
of the bear’s forelegs, and when, by
their instructions, Nathan lifted the
door, they dragged the limp, shaggy
carcass out upon the floor.\par

When the full proportions of the
huge brute were revealed, the boy’s
rejoicings broke forth anew, just as
his father and the hired man came
hurrying in, when he received fresh
praise for his deed. The dinner was
bounteous, if late, and the Indians,
Toksoose and Tahmont, had their full
share of it, with a big chunk of pork
and as much bear’s meat as they cared
to take, which was small, since they
liked better the daintier meat of the
musquash, wherewith their trapping
afforded them an ample supply.\par

When toward nightfall the mother
returned, she was told the story by
the victors, and with equal delight
was it rehearsed when Job happened
to come, and the unstinted praise of
the old hunter was sweetest of all.
Many a day was the tale rehearsed for
the benefit of new listeners. Even
when Nathan was an old man, and
looked back on the many adventures
of his life, not one stood forth so
clearly in the haze of the past as this
adventure with the bear, wherein he
had borne the chief part.\par

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CHAPTER IX—A FRONTIER TRAGEDY}

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{\noindent}
One autumn day after the leaves
had faded and fallen, Nathan was busy
husking corn, with less thought upon
his task and the growing pile of yellow
ears than of a promised partridge
hunt on the morrow with his good
friend Job. His father was chopping
in a new clearing. Silas had been
sent with the oxen to take some logs
to Lemon Fair Mill. His mother
grew uneasy at her spinning, for Seth
did not come home to dinner, nor yet
when the afternoon was half spent.
After many times anxiously looking
and listening in the direction of the
clearing, and as often saying to herself,
“What does keep father so?”
she called to Nathan.\par

“I guess you’d better go and see
what henders father so. I can’t think
what it is. I hope it hain’t anything.”\par

“Perhaps he’s gone over to Callenders
or some o’ the neighbors,” said
Nathan. “I hain’t heard a tree fall
for ever so long nor his axe a goin’ for
a long time.”\par

“Mebby he’s cut his foot or something,”
said Martha, beginning to cry.\par

“I can’t hear nothin’ of him for all
the air’s so holler and everything
sounds so plain,” said Ruth, listening
again. “You’d better go and see
what henders him. Mebby he can’t
git home.”\par

As the boy anxiously hastened to
the new clearing, the intense stillness
of the woods filled him with undefined
dread. His ears ached for some
sound, the tapping of a woodpecker,
the cry of a jay, but most of all, for the
sound of axe strokes or his father’s
voice. Silence pervaded the clearing
also.\par

There, on a stump, was his father’s
blue frock, one bit of color in the
sombre scene. And yes, there was
some slight flitting movement near
the last tree that had been felled and
lay untrimmed just as it had fallen,
but it was only a bevy of chickadees
peering curiously at something on the
ground beneath them, yet voiceless
as if their perennial cheerfulness was
dumb in the pervading silence. So
sick with dread he could scarcely
move, the boy forced himself to approach
the spot, and look upon that
which he felt was awaiting him, his
father lying dead beneath the huge,
prone tree, that had crushed him in
its fall.\par

The glowing sunset sky and the
glistening waters of the lake grew
black, the earth reeled. With a piteous
groan of “Father! father!” the
boy sank down as lifeless, for a space,
as the beloved form that lay beside
him in eternal sleep.\par

He awoke as from a terrible dream
to the miserable realization that it was
not a dream. Then walking, as still
in a dream, not noting how he went
nor by any familiar object marking his
way, he bore home the woeful tidings.\par

Simple as were the funeral rites in
the primitive communities, they were
not lacking in the impressiveness of
heartfelt sorrow nor in the homely
expressions of sympathy for the bereaved
and respect for the dead. So
Seth Beeman’s neighbors reverently
laid him to rest in the soil his own
hand had uncovered to the sunlight.
They set at his head a rough slate
stone, whose rude lettering could be
read half a century later, telling his
name and age, and the manner of his
death.\par

Ruth was left in a sorry plight, so
suddenly bereft of the strong arm she
had leaned upon, without a thought
that it could ever be taken from her.
Now she had only her son, a sturdy
lad, indeed, but of an age to be cared
for rather than to care for others.
Toombs had proved better than he
looked, kind enough, and a good
worker, and familiar with the needs
of the farm. When his time was out
she had no means to pay his wages
nor could she well get along without
him. So he staid on, taking a mortgage,
at length, on the premises in lieu
of money, and becoming more and
more important in Ruth’s estimation,
though regarded with increasing dislike
and jealousy by her son, who
found himself less and less considered.\par

Months passed, dulling sorrow and
the sense of loss, and bringing many
a bitter change. The bitterness of
Nathan’s life was made almost unbearable
presently. His mother, of
a weak and clinging nature, inevitably
drifted to a fate a more self-reliant
woman would have avoided. Worried
with uncomprehended business, and
assured by Toombs that this was the
only way to retain a home for herself
and children, yet unmoved by the
kindly advice of Seth’s honest friends
and neighbors, as well as the anger
and entreaties of her son, she went
with Toombs over to the Fort, where
they were married by the chaplain
stationed there.\par

With such a man in the place of his
wise and affectionate father, Nathan’s
life was filled with misery, nor could
he ever comprehend his mother’s
course. Though bestowing upon
Martha and his mother indifferent
notice or none at all, towards the boy
the stepfather exercised his recently
acquired authority with severity, giving
him the hardest and most unpleasant
work to do, and treating him always
with distrust, often with cruelty.\par

“I hate him,” he told Ruth. “He’s
sassed me every day since I come here,
and I’ve got a bigger job ’an that to
settle, one that I’d ha’ settled with
his father, if he hadn’t cheated me by
gettin’ killed.”\par

“Oh, what do you mean?” Ruth
gasped. “I thought you and Seth
was always good friends.”\par

“Friends!” he growled, contemptuously;
“I hated the ground he walked
on. Look here,” and Silas pulled out
his leather pocketbook and took from
it a soiled paper which he held before
her eyes.\par

She read the bold, clear signature
of Ethan Allen, and, with a sickening
thrill, that of Seth Beeman under it.\par

“Yes, Ethan Allen and Seth Beeman
and his neighbors whipped a man
for claimin’ his own, and your boy
went and gethered ’em in. Mebby
you re’collect it.”\par

“I couldn’t help it,” she gasped.
“I didn’t see it. I run and hid and
stopped my ears.”\par

“Well, ’Rastus Graves ’ould ha’
settled his debts if he’d ha’ lived. But
he died afore his back got healed over,
and afore he died he turned the job
over to his brother, that’s me, Silas
Toombs, or Graves—they’re the same
in the end.”\par

Ruth stared at him in dumb amazement
and horror, while he proceeded,
pouring forth his long concealed wrath.\par

“Well, I’ve got Seth Beeman’s
wife, and, what’s wuth more, his farm,
an’ his childern right ’nunder my
thumb. I hope he knows on’t. And
now, ma’am,” lowering his voice from
its passionate exultation, “you don’t
want to breathe a word o’ this to your
nice neighbors or to your young ’uns.
It wouldn’t do no good and it might be
unpleasant all round. You don’t want
folks to know what a fool you be.”\par

After this disclosure, Ruth lived, in
weariness and vain regret, a life that
seemed quite hopeless but for looking
forward to the time when her son
could assert his rights and be her
champion. Her nature was one of
those that still bend, without being
broken, by whatever weight is laid on
them.\par

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CHAPTER X—REBELLION}

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{\noindent}
One day Nathan was gathering ashes
from the heaps where the log piles
had been burned and storing them in
a rude shed. Close by this stood the
empty leach-tubs awaiting filling and
the busy days and nights when the
potash-making should begin. It was
hard, unpleasant work, irritating to
skin, eyes, and temper. It was natural
a boy should linger a little as Nathan
did, when he emptied a basket, and
quickly retreated with held breath out
of the dusty cloud. He looked longingly
on the shining channel of the
creek, and wished he might follow it
to the lake and fish in the cool shadows
of the shore. He wished that
Job would chance to come through
the woods, but Job lately rarely came
near them, for he was vexed with
Ruth for mating with this stranger,
and the new master gave no welcome
to any of the friends of the old master.
His hands were busy as his
thoughts, when he was startled by
his stepfather’s voice close behind
him.\par

“You lazy whelp, what you putterin’
’bout? You spend half your
time a gawpin. You git them ashes
housed afore noon or I’ll give ye a
skinnin’, and I’ll settle an old score
at the same time,” and Toombs
switched a blue beech rod he held in
his big hand. After seeing the boy
hurry nervously to this impossible
task, he went back to his chopping.\par

The shadows crept steadily toward
the north till they marked noontime,
and still one gray ash heap confronted
Nathan. As he stood with a full basket
of ashes poised on the edge of the
ash bin, Toombs appeared, with his
axe on his shoulder and the beech in
his hand. “You know what I told
you, and Silas Toombs doesn’t go
back on his words; no, sir.”\par

“I couldn’t do it. I tried, but I
couldn’t get ’em all done!”\par

Silas strode toward him in a fury,
when Nathan hurled the basket of
ashes full at his head, and dodging
behind the shed was in rapid flight
toward the woods, when his assailant
emerged from the choking, blinding
cloud, sputtering out mingled oaths
and ashes. In a moment he caught
the line of flight and followed in swift
pursuit. The boy’s nimble feet widened
the distance between them, but
he was at the start almost exhausted
with his severe work, so that when he
reached the woods his only hope lay
in hiding.\par

Silas, entering the woods, could
neither see nor hear his intended victim.
Listening between spasms of
rushing and raging, he heard a slight
rustling among the branches of a great
hemlock that reared its huge, russet-gray
trunk close beside him. Looking
up, he saw a pair of dusty legs
dangling twenty feet above him.\par

“Come down, you little devil, or
I’ll shoot you.”\par

“I won’t,” said Nathan, half surprised
at his own daring; “you can’t
shoot with an axe.”\par

“I’m glad you made me think on’t.
Then come down or I’ll chop you
down!” As an earnest of his threat
he drove his axe to the eye into the
boll of the tree.\par

The boy only climbed the higher,
and disappeared among the dark
foliage and thick, quivering rays of
branches. Parleying no more, Silas
began chopping so vigorously that
the great flakes of chips flew abroad
upon the forest floor in a continuous
shower, and soon paved it all about
him with white blotches. When the
trunk was cut to the middle, he
shouted up another summons to surrender,
but got no answer. Then his
quick, strong strokes began to fall on
the other side, steadily biting their
way toward the centre, till the huge,
ancient pillar of living wood began to
tremble on its sapped foundation.
Standing away from it, he peered up
among the whorls of gray branches
and broad shelves of leaves, but they
disclosed nothing.\par

“Hello! Come down! Don’t be a
fool! An’ I won’t lick you. The tree’s
comin’ an’ it’ll kill you.” Still no
answer nor sound, save the solemn
whisper of the leaves, came down from
the lofty branches. “You’re a plucky
one, but down you come!”\par

In a sudden blaze of passion at being
thus scorned, he drove his axe deep
into the tree’s heart. A puff of wind
stirred the topmost boughs. A shiver
ran through every branch and twig.
Fibre after fibre cracked and parted.
The trunk tremulously swayed from
its steadfast base. The sighing
branches clung to the unstable air.
A tall, lithe birch, that had long
leaned to their embrace, sprang from
it as in a flutter of fear, and then,
with a slowly accelerating sweep, the
ancient pillar, with all its long upheld
burden of boughs and perennial
greenery, went through its fellows
to the last sullen boom of its downfall.
Toombs breathlessly watched and
listened for something besides the
shortening vibration of the branches,
some sound other than the swish of
relieved entanglement, but no sound
or motion succeeded them.\par

“Nathan, Nathan,” he called again
and again.\par

He ran along the trunk looking
among the branches. He felt under
the densest tangles, then cleared them
away with quick but careful axe
strokes, dreading, in every moment of
search, that the next would reveal the
crushed and mangled form of the boy.
Not till the shadows of night thickened
the shadows of the woods did he quit
his fruitless search. He knew the boy
was dead, and, if found, what then?
Well, for the present a plausible lie
would serve him well enough.\par

“Your boy has run off, Mis’
Toombs. You needn’t worry. He’ll
git starved out ’fore long and sneak
back. And he’ll work all the better
when he does come. Boys has got to
have their tantrums an’ git over ’em.”
This device served so well to quiet
any graver apprehensions that Ruth
entertained, he the more insisted on
it. “Like’s not he’s over to the Fort.
They’ll make him stan’ round, I tell
ye.”\par

He intended in the morning to renew
his search, but when it came he
dared not go near that fallen tree, the
dumb witness and concealer of his
crime. When, from afar, he saw the
crows wheeling above the spot, or
when at night he heard from that
direction the wolf’s long howl, he
shook with fear, lest they had discovered
his secret and would in some way
reveal it.\par

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CHAPTER XI—ESCAPE}

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{\noindent}
When the accidental shaking of the
branch disclosed his refuge, Nathan
wished he had taken the easier shelter
of a hollow log or the tangle of a windfall.
The more so, when he caught
brief, swift flashes of the axe gleaming
up through the dark foliage and felt
the tree shiver at every sturdy stroke.
But he had no thought of surrender.
The trunk of the leaning birch, so
slender that his arms and legs could
clasp it, had given him access to this
coign of vantage and now offered a
retreat from it.\par

Toombs was intent upon his work,
with his back turned squarely toward
the foot of the birch, though barely
six paces from it. Escape, if at all,
must be made while the chopper was
on this side of the hemlock. Very
cautiously he regained the birch where
it hid trunk and lithe branches in the
embrace of the great evergreen, and
then worked downward, with an eye
ever on his enemy underneath, making
swiftest progress when the axe fell
and its sound overbore the rustle of
the birch’s shaggy, yellow mane, that
his buttons scraped along. At last
his toes were tickled by the topmost
leaves of a low, sprangling hobble
bush, then lightly touched by the last
year’s fallen leaves and the soft mould.
Then, as a flying chip struck him full
on the cheek, he loosed his hold on
the trunk and stole stealthily to the
shelter of the nearest great tree.\par

The axe strokes ceased, but a glance
showed him that Toombs was only wiping
his sweaty brow on his sleeve, as
he looked up into the tree and addressed
its supposed occupant. As the
futile chopping was resumed, Nathan
crept off through the undergrowth till
beyond sight and hearing, when he ran
upright so swiftly that he was a mile
away when the roar of the tree’s fall
came booming through the woods.\par

He sat down to get his breath and
determine where to go, for so far he
had only thought to escape his stepfather.
Should he try for the Fort?
How was he to cross the lake without
a boat, and, if there, on what plea that
he could offer was he likely to be
harbored, for Toombs was on very
friendly terms with the commander!
Not there could he find protection.
His old friend Job was the only one
to whom he could look, and in his
secluded cabin he might hope to escape
detection.\par

With this determination he arose
and went his way, too well skilled in
woodcraft, for all his youth, to lose it
while the sun shone. Pushing steadily
on he saw at last the slanted sunbeams
shining golden green through
the woodside leaves, then saw them
glimmering on the quiet channel of
Job’s creek, and following the shore
upstream, presently emerged in the
little clearing. It was as quiet as the
woods around it, and seemed more
untenanted, for through them the
songs of the thrushes were ringing in
flute-like cadences, while here nothing
was astir.\par

Nathan made his way so silently to
the open door that he stood looking
in upon the occupants of the cabin
before they became aware of his presence.
Job was squatting before the
fireplace engaged in frying meat, and
a great, gaunt, blue-mottled hound sat
close beside him, intently watching
the progress of the cooking. Presently
his keen nose caught a scent of
the intruder, and he uttered a low,
threatening growl that attracted his
master’s attention.\par

“Be quiet, Gabriel; what is’t troubles
you?” Then seeing his visitor
hesitating at the threshold, “Why,
Nathan, come in my boy, come in,
the hound won’t hurt you. Ain’t he
a pictur’? Did you ever see such ears?
Did you ever see such a chest and
such legs? And he’s as good as he
is harnsome. I went clean to Manchester
arter him and gin three prime
beaver skins for him. He’s one o’
Peleg Sunderland’s breed and’ll foller
anything that walks, if you tell him
to, from a mushrat to a man. And
as for his voice, good land! You
hain’t never heard no music till you
hear it. That’s what give him his
name, Gabriel. But what’s the matter
with you, Nathan?” when, withdrawing
his admiring gaze from his
new acquisition, he noted the boy’s
wearied and troubled countenance.
“You look clean beat out. There
hain’t nothin’ the matter with your
folks?”\par

Nathan told the story of his treatment
since his mother’s marriage
to Toombs, and his unpremeditated
flight, and all the particulars of his
escape.\par

“I’d ha’ gin a dozen mushrat skins
to seen him when he got the tree down
and didn’t find you, and him like a
fool dog a barkin’ up a tree an hour
arter the coon’d left it. You done
right to come to me, for he won’t
come here to look for ye right off.
And then when he’s had time to cool
off and git ashamed of himself, you
can go home.”\par

“No,” said the boy quickly; “I’ll
never go back till I’m old enough to
lick him and make him sorry I come.”\par

“Oh, well, you think you will.
But you won’t never. The rough
edge’ll be wore off afore you git
round to it. Once I swore I’d thrash
a schoolmarster I hed, and when I
went to do it we jes’ sot down and
talked over old times, like ol’ friends.
But what’ll your mother and sis do
without you?”\par

“They’ll be better off without me.
I can’t help mother any, nor she me,
yet awhile. Can’t you let her know
I’m safe some way?”\par

“Oh, yes, I’ll happen round there
some day to rights. How in tunket
did she ever come to mate wi’ that
surly red-haired dog? You know I
hain’t seen her since they was married.
Women is onaccountable critters, anyhow,
an’ I’ve been marcifully presarved
from ever bein’ tackled to one
on ’em;” yet he sighed, as he looked
about the littered room, that showed
so plainly the lack of housewifely
care.\par

After the supper of fried venison
and johnny-cake was eaten, they sat
in the twilight and firelight talking
over the past and plans for the
future, till the boy, worn out with the
events of the day, was given a nest
of furs in the loft, where he would be
safe from detection by any chance
visitor, and Job, after barring the door
and carefully covering the fire, betook
himself with the hound to their accustomed
couch on the floor.\par

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CHAPTER XII—A FREE LIFE}

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{\noindent}
The borders of the clearing were
dimly defined in the dusk of the next
evening, and Nathan was beginning
to feel lonely, though he had the
hound for company, when Job came
in with his gun on his shoulder.\par

“Well, what news?” Nathan asked,
after a little impatient waiting for
Job’s account of his trip abroad.\par

“Well, I happened in just arter
noon. Your nice stepfather sot by
the fireplace a smokin’. ‘Where’s
Nate,’ says I, an’ he up an’ answered
mighty quick, ‘Run away, but he’ll
be back quick enough.’ Your mother
was lookin’ turrible worrited, an’ it
was quite a spell afore I could git a
chance to do my arrant with Toombs
right in the room. Bimeby I made
out to have a turrible pesterin’ sliver
in my right hand an’ got your mother
to pick it out wi’ a needle. I’d ruther
have a leg took off ’an to have a
woman jabbin’ at a sliver. Whilst
she was at it, me wi’ my back towards
Toombs, I whispered you was at my
house and all right, an’ you’d ortu
seen her face light up. Then we
played the sliver was out, an’ arter
I’d wished you was to home to go
fishin’ with me an’ wondered what on
airth you’d run away f’m such a good
home for, I come off. An’ I tell you,
boy, that ere ol’ scoundrel thinks he’s
killed you. When I come off towards
where he chopped that tree, he follered
along to see if I went nigh it,
an’ all the time I could see he was
scairter’n he was mad.”\par

“I don’t care, I can’t go back if
you’ll let me stay with you.”\par

“Sartainly, an’ glad to have you.”\par

Nathan readily adapted himself to
the ranger’s way of living, helping him
in the cabin work and that of the clearing.
At intervals, through his friend,
he sent his mother tidings of his welfare
and learned of her own. Through
the same way, and his mother’s ready
assistance, he gained possession of his
other clothes—a tow shirt, a blue frock,
a pair of gray breeches, and two pairs
of thick woolen stockings, as large a
wardrobe as most backwoods dwellers
could boast of.\par

“Your mother stuck this out of the
loft winder as I come away,” said Job
one day, handing him his father’s
cherished gun.\par

“Oh, I am glad to get this, and
see, it is longer’n I be yet. But I’m
growing, for I measured when Toombs
put this up loft so’t he could hang his
gun on the hooks over the fireplace.
See, I can hold it at arm’s length long
enough to see to shoot,” and he
stretched out the long-barrelled gun
with pride.\par

“Toombs was out a burnin’ log
heaps,” Job went on. “She says he’s
dretful narvous an’ jumps at every
sound. I ruther guess he’s gittin’ his
pay as he goes along, my boy.”\par

In preparation for the fall trapping,
which was the ranger’s chief dependence,
the two, accompanied by Gabriel,
made long ranges through the
forest, marking their line by blazed
trees, to build deadfalls for martens
on the upland and for mink along the
brook and larger streams, and larger
traps for martens, otters, fisher, and
beaver, and when the leaves began to
fall they daily gathered their furry
harvest. Day after day, too, the
woods rang with Gabe’s deep, melodious
voice as he drove the deer to
water. Many an adventure on lake
or in forest spiced the half wild life,
and the loving trust of the old man
so sweetened it that time glided
swiftly past. Many a lesson of woodcraft
the boy also learned, as well as the
priceless one of love and charity to all
created things, if Indians and Toombs
were excepted. Perhaps, in time,
their turn for forbearance would come.\par

One day late in the fall Nathan
ventured to the Fort, as much to visit
the garrison boys, for whose companionship
he often longed in his
isolation, as to carry some fine partridges
to the commandant’s lady.
He had shot them himself with his
father’s gun, in the use of which he
was becoming expert.\par

“Whativer has coom o’ your redheaded
stepfather? He didn’t coom
here sin he coom marryin’ your mother,”
said one of the English boys.\par

After this information, visits to the
Fort were more frequent, since there
was no fear of meeting Toombs. The
sentinel, who, with his musket shouldered
high above his left hip and his
clubbed queue bobbing in unison to
his slow, measured steps, always paced
before the gate, made but a show of
challenging him, and Nathan was almost
as free as the inmates to every
part of the Fort, excepting the officers’
quarters and the vigilantly guarded
magazine. The drill and parade
of the soldiers, in their spotless scarlet
uniforms and shining arms, though
there were less than fifty, rank and
file, seemed a grand martial display,
and he was always thrilled with the
stirring notes of drum and fife. Occasionally
he met the commandant’s wife
walking on the parapet, so refined and
different from the toil-worn women
he had been accustomed to see, that
she seemed a being of another world.\par

Once that fall Job and his young
companion went far back into the solitude
of the primeval forest to hunt
moose. Even the thunder of Ticonderoga’s
guns was never echoed there,
and from morning till night they heard
the sound of no human life but their
own. At night the dismal chorus of
the wolves was heard far and near, and
now and then, what was a pleasanter
sound, the call of a moose, soft and
mellow, in the distance. With a birch
bark horn Job simulated this call, and
lured a moose into an ambuscade,
where, within short range, the huge
creature was killed. When with much
labor the meat was transported and
safely stored in the cabin, they were
in no danger of a winter famine. Soon
winter came, with days of snowbound
isolation, and its days of out-door work
and pleasant, healthful pastime.\par

The gloom of a blustering, snowy
February day was thickening into the
gloom of night, when a traveller and
his jaded horse appeared at the door
of the little log house.\par

“I’ve somehow missed my way on
the lake,” said he to Job, when the
door was opened. “I’m bound for
Bennington. Can you give me and my
poor beast shelter till morning and
then set me on the right road?”\par

“Sartainly, come in, come in,” was
answered, heartily. “You’re welcome
to such as I’ve got of bed an’
board, an’ your hoss’ll be better off
in the shed wi’ corn fodder’n he’d be
a browsin’ in the woods.”\par

When the stranger had seen his
jaded horse cared for and had come
in, the firelight revealed a man in the
prime of life, of fine face and figure
and of military bearing, though he
was clad in the plain dress of a civilian.
He proved a genial guest, and
amused his companions with stories
of his recent journey to Canada, and
of his home in Connecticut, and with
relations of the stirring events in that
and the other colonies that portended
a revolt against the mother country.
In turn he was interested in everything
pertaining to the New Hampshire
Grants, the progress of the
quarrel with New York claimants,
the temper of the inhabitants toward
England, but, particularly, was he
curious about the condition of the
adjacent fortress. Concerning its garrison
and the plans of the fortification
he found Nathan well informed.\par

“I like to remember such things
about a place that has been so famous,”
the stranger observed, as he
made notes in a memorandum book.\par

“I would like to visit the fort sometime.
How many men did you count
the last time you saw them parade,
did you say?”\par

It was well into the night when the
precious embers were covered and the
three betook themselves to sleep,
with the wind roaring in the woods
and the snow driving gustily against
the oiled-paper windows of the cabin.
When they awoke the storm was
spent. Beneath the cloudless morning
sky the forest stood silent as the
army of spectres that its snow-powdered
trunks resembled. After breakfast
Job put on his snowshoes and
led his guest to the desired road
to the southward settlements. This
break in the winter monotony was
often dwelt upon by the fireside in
the little log house. A chance visit,
if aught occurs by chance, yet it
proved of vast importance.\par

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CHAPTER XIII—FOREBODINGS OF STORM}

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{\noindent}
After many days of fair promises
tardily fulfilled, spring had come. The
soft air was full of its sounds and
odors, the medley of harsh and liquid
notes of the myriad blackbirds that
swarmed in the trees along the creek,
the crackling croak of the frogs, the
whimpering call of the muskrats, the
booming of bitterns, the splashing and
quacking of wild ducks, and the murmur
of running waters. There were
the spicy fragrance of pine and hemlock,
and the fresh smell of warming
mould and bursting buds, while the
perfume of wild flowers added a
moiety to the spring time odor. The
shad trees shone like snowdrifts in the
gray woods, and the yellow catkins
were alive with humming bees.\par

Amid the pleasant sights of nature’s
progress, Nathan and his friend sat
near the door, taking off and stretching
on pliant bows the skins of the
last catch of muskrats.\par

“It’s about time to quit trappin’
for this year,” said Job, as he slipped
a skin onto the bow that he held between
his knees. “They’re gettin’ a
leetle off prime, though better’n they
be in the fall an’ no kits as there is
then,” and he fastened the skin in
place, with a cut near its edge, into
each horn of the bow. “Good land!
What’s Gabe hullabalooin’ at now,
I wonder?”\par

Nathan peered cautiously around
the corner and whispered:\par

“It’s neighbor Newton. I’ll go up
loft.” Accordingly he climbed the
ladder and crept softly to the side of
the loft above the door. Through the
wide cracks of the loose flooring he
could see a patch of the chip strewn,
sunlit earth outside, with Job’s long
legs stretching across it and his hands
idle a moment as he called in the
hound, who presently appeared, and
behind him the stout stockinged legs
of neighbor Newton.\par

“Job, have you heard the news?”
Newton asked excitedly.\par

“News? What news?” Job’s
knife stopped half-way in the slit it
was making along a muskrat’s throat.\par

“There’s ben a fight down in the
Bay Colony ’twixt our folks and the
king’s troops and our folks whipped
’em.”\par

“Our folks a fightin’ the king’s
troops?” said Job incredulously.\par

The other hastily related such particulars
of the momentous conflict as
he had learned. Nathan, whose heart
was beating fast at the stirring news,
saw the muskrat drop to the ground.\par

“I al’ys said them reg’lars, shootin’
breast high at nothin’, couldn’t stan’
agin our bushfighters, aimin’ to kill,”
Job said exultantly; “but what next,
Dan’l?”\par

“War—it means war. The country’s
all a-risin’. Every man’s got to
choose the side he’ll take. Which
side is yourn, Job?”\par

There was a silence, and the answer
came with slow deliberation. “I
hoped to end my days in peace. I’ve
had enough o’ fightin’, the Lord
knows. When I’ve fit it was for the
land I was born in—if it was under the
British flag—an’ I shan’t never fight
for no other.”\par

“Every man in these clearin’s is all
right, so far as we know, exceptin’
that aire sour-faced Toombs. He
hain’t no good will towards our side.
A Tory in Seth’s shoes, and him red-hot
for liberty. He’s got a Canuck
a-workin’ for him, and I’d livser trust
a wolf’n one o’ them pea-soupers. I
hain’t no patience wi’ Ruth for marryin’
that critter. Where do you s’pose
her boy is?” There being no reply
the speaker went on: “I b’lieve that
devil has made way with him. He
acts turrible cur’us, scared and startin’
at every sound,” and the two walked
off towards the creek.\par

Half an hour later when Job returned,
he asked Nathan: “Well,
what do you think o’ the news, my
boy?”\par

“Oh, is it true about the fight?
How I wish I could go and help our
folks. Father’d go quick.”\par

“Well, well, stay where ye be. If
it goes on, it’s sure to strike the ol’
war-path,” and the old ranger swept
his arm towards the lake. “There’ll
be work for us here. The sign o’ that
fresh water mairmaid is comin’ true
agin.”\par

They passed a week in restless, impatient
waiting, when, unheralded by
the hound, Newton again entered the
cabin and chanced to come face to
face with the boy.\par

“Well, here you be,” he said, without
surprise and smiling good-humoredly;
“I s’pected as much t’other
day when I see the extry knife an’
pile o’ mushrats. Say, Job, how is’t?
Can I speak out afore him consarnin’
the business we was talkin’ on?”\par

“To be sure. He’s close-mouthed
an’ he’s achin’ to go an’ jine our folks
down in the ol’ Bay Colony.”\par

“Good; he’s the same stuff as his
father.” He laid his friendly hand on
Nathan’s shoulder and continued in
a low, earnest voice: “There’s a plan
all fixed to take Ti and Crown P’int.
It seems a Connecticut feller named
Brown started the thing a-goin’ some
weeks ago. There’s nigh ontu two
hunderd and fifty men in the Grants
engaged to do the job. Ethan Allen
commands. We muster at Beeman’s
Crik, day after to-morrow night.
You’ll be there?” Job stretched
forth his hand to his friend, who
warmly clasped it.\par

“Me, too; let me go, too.” Nathan’s
heart swelled with pride, and he
felt himself suddenly leaping to manhood
and a place among men.\par

“He’s a stout lad an’ he handles a
gun like a man. Let him come,” said
Job. “But how be we goin’ to git
across the lake? There hain’t boats
enough hereabouts to take more’n
thirty men to oncet.”\par

“Colonel Skeene’s is goin’ to be
borrowed, an’ there’s a plan to git
some more without askin’ at Crown
P’int; with them an’ what we can pick
up we’ll make enough. How many’ll
your birch carry?”\par

“Six men that’s used to such craft,
but not one lummax.”\par

“Well, bring it along. Everything
of the boat kind’ll be needed. Toombs
troubles me most. He’s on the fence,
which means he ain’t to be trusted.
He’ll see our men a musterin’ an’
s’pect what’s up, an’ let the garrison
know some way. He and his Canuck
has got to be watched.”\par

“Easy done! We can tie ’em,
neck an’ heels, an’ leave ’em to take
keer o’ theirselves.”\par

“Well, I’ll send a guard an’ see to
that,” Newton said as he hurried
away to warn other settlers of the
projected enterprise.\par

Those left began to clean their
weapons carefully and prepare to
mould some bullets. Job rehearsed
his long disused manual of arms, in
which he found Nathan familiar
through his close observation of the
soldiers’ drill at the Fort.\par

“You don’t want to aim that way,”
the old man said, when, at the command,
Nathan held his piece ready to
fire with the butt end under his elbow.
“Lord, how I’ve heard Major Rogers
swear to see the reg’lars wastin’ lead,
shootin’ int’ the tree tops wi’ the
enemy fair afore ’em! Fightin’ hain’t
no foolin’. Aim to kill, jes’ as ye
would at a pa’tridge. There—that’s
the talk,” when Nathan, following his
instructions, laid his cheek to the
stock and flashed the priming at the
breast of an imaginary foe.\par

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CHAPTER XIV—GABRIEL’S GOOD SERVICE}

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{\noindent}
On the afternoon of the 9th of May,
1775, Job and Nathan laid their guns
in the canoe and stood beside her
ready to set her afloat in the brown
water, whose ripples softly lapped the
drift of dried sedges along the shore.
Job looked anxiously about, and once
more, as he had several times previously
done, he whistled a loud shrill
note through his fingers.\par

“Where on airth is that dog? He
mistrusted somethin’ was up and run
off. He’d ortu be tied up, but we
can’t wait any longer, an’ he’ll hafter
run loose. Wal, le’s be off.”\par

Lifting the canoe, they set her
afloat, stepped lightly on board, and,
kneeling in the bottom, sent her flying
down the creek. They skirted the
lake almost beneath the spreading
branches of the maples, now already
dappled with the tender green of budding
leaves. A little back from the
naked, western shore, with its crumbling
ruins of the old French water
battery, uprose the gray battlements
and barracks of Ticonderoga, and the
blazoned cross of England floating
lazily in the breeze.\par

“I’ve follered it for many a day,”
said Job sadly, “an’ I never thought
to go agin it. But I b’lieve I’m
right,” and he turned his face resolutely
forward.\par

The turmoil and horror of war
seemed far removed from the serene
sky, the rippled water kissing the
quiet shores, and the pervading sense
of the earth’s renewing life, enforced
by bursting buds and opening flowers
and songs of birds. Even the grim
fortress seemed but a memento of
conflict long since ended forever.\par

Sweeping into the broad mouth of
the creek, they joined the motley
crowd already gathered there. The
assemblage was composed of all who
were capable of bearing arms, from
gray-headed veterans of the last war,
to the striplings who had not yet
been mustered on a training field. Job
received hearty greetings from more
than one old comrade whom he had
not seen since they ranged this region,
then an unreclaimed wilderness, under
the leadership of the brave and wary
Robert Rogers, and he was soon in
reminiscences of scouts and ambuscades,
while Nathan watched and
noted everything, a most interested
spectator of what was passing so unobtrusively
into history.\par

Presently there was a stir and gathering
together of the detached groups
and an expectant hush. Then he saw
towering among them, in cocked hat
and military garb of blue and buff,
the stalwart figure of Ethan Allen.\par

“Fall in, men,” said the deep-toned
voice of Allen, and the groups formed
in line as best they could among the
trees.\par

As they moved forward to take
their places Nathan noticed an unfamiliar
form skulking among the tree
trunks near him—a swarthy little man
wearing a tasseled, woolen cap and
gray coat unlike the Yankee garb. It
flashed across his mind that this was
the Canadian employed by his stepfather,
and he tried to keep watch of
his movements. But there was much
else to engage him, and just then he
felt a touch on his leg, and, turning,
saw Gabriel’s sorrowful face looking
wistfully up to his own. “Down,
Gabe,” he said in a low tone, and the
hound crouched behind. Just then
Ethan Allen, having passed slowly
down the line, accosting one and
another, broke the silence:\par

“Friends of the Grants, we are
already enough for this business in
hand, but there are more to come.
There will be boats enough to cross
us all in good time. Keep quiet.
Cook your rations and eat your supper.
To-morrow we’ll eat our breakfast
in Ticonderoga, or know the
reason why.”\par

As Nathan’s entranced gaze was
for a moment withdrawn from the
beloved commander, he caught a
glimpse of the little unknown man
stealing away among the shadows.
Being more accustomed to the rigid
discipline of the garrison than to the
free and easy customs of volunteers,
he did not dare to leave the ranks till
many of his comrades had straggled
away. Then he sought Job and told
him his suspicions.\par

“I thought Newton was goin’ to
tend to them critters. Newton,” he
called to his neighbor, “didn’t you
put a guard over Toombs and his
man?”\par

“Toombs is safe in care of a good
man, but his Canuck couldn’t be
found. I guess he’s too stupid to do
any mischief, anyway.”\par

“Well, he’s ben a sneakin’ round
here an’ now he’s gone, an’ there’s
no tellin’ where. Where’s Toombs’s
boat?”\par

“Here,” and Newton pointed to
the landing, where it lay among many
others.\par

“Gabe’s round here somewheres,”
said Nathan inadvertently.\par

“Jest the one I was a wishin’ for,”
said the old man, aroused from his
troubled pondering. “He can help
when nob’dy else can.” He then
sent one of his shrill whistles into
the woods, and then another, with
such good effect that Gabriel presently
appeared, loping easily along.
“Good fellow, good fellow. Now,
Newton, we’ll ketch that skunk.
Here, here, old boy,” and he hurried
swiftly away with the hound at heel.\par

Arrived at the house they found
Toombs unconfined, but under the
vigilant guard of a lynx-eyed Green
Mountain Boy. When Job inquired
for the Canadian, he detected a gleam
of triumph in the glowering eyes of
the surly, half-defiant prisoner.\par

“The fox has slipped,” said Job;
“but never mind. If he can fool
Gabe he’s a smart ’un. Ruth, where’s
somethin’ that ’ere Canuck has
wore?”\par

Ruth, who stood near her idle spinning
wheel, half dazed at the unwonted
commotion and afraid of she knew not
what, pointed covertly to a much
worn pair of moccasins hanging near
the fireplace to dry.\par

“Hisn? There couldn’t be nothin’
better. See here, Gabe.”\par

The hound snuffed eagerly at the
soiled footgear, slowly wagging his
tail, and then looked inquiringly at
his master.\par

“Sarch him out, boy. Sarch him
out,” Job encouraged him, pointing
along the ground.\par

The hound circled about the yard a
little, and then, finding the trail, followed
it silently and steadily down to
the creek to where the men were mustered.
There, on the much trodden
ground, it baffled him for a while.
Resorting to his usual tactics, he made
widening circles and again found the
trail and went off upon it in a steady,
untiring pace southward in the direction
of Ticonderoga.\par

“I knowed it,” said Job to himself,
“and I’ll bet ye there’ll be a Canuck
treed afore sundown.” Guided by
the deep, mellow baying of the hound,
he set off, with his gun at atrail,
in rapid pursuit.\par

The agile little Canadian had at
least an hour’s start, and made such
brisk use of it that he was on the shore
opposite the Fort when he was overtaken
by the hound, who at once set
furiously upon him. Being unarmed,
he was forced to scramble up a tree,
from which, when he had recovered
his breath, he began lustily to hail the
Fort, and at intervals to curse the
hound. His shouts, and Gabriel’s
insistent deep-mouthed bayings, could
scarcely fail to attract the attention
of the garrison, and Job, pushing forward
at his best pace, presently appeared
upon the scene.\par

“Hello de Forrt,” the Canuck was
shouting. “Hey! Hello de Forrt!
Sacre chien! Go home, Ah tol’ you!
Hello, Carillon. Tac-con-derrrque!
All de Bastonais was comin’ for took
you, Ah tol’ you! Sacre chien! Stop
off you nowse so Ah can heard me
spik.”\par

“Shut yer head an’ come down out
o’ that mighty quick,” Job commanded
in a low voice.\par

“Me no onstan’ Angleesh,” and
again the voice rang out over across
the water: “Hello de Forrt!”\par

Peering through the overhanging
branches, Job saw a group of red-coated
soldiers gathered on the other
shore, and presently saw a boat putting
out from it.\par

“Looka here,” said he sternly, as
he cocked his piece and aimed upward;
“I don’t want tu be obleeged
tu hurt you, but stop yer hollerin’ an’
come right down.”\par

“Me no onstan’, Ah tol’ you!
Hello—.” The lusty hail was cut short
by the report of the long smooth-bore.
The Canadian’s cap went spinning from
his head, and he came scrambling
down in a haste that threatened to
leave half his clothes behind.\par

“Ah comin’! Ah comin’! Don’t
shot some more!” he cried in a voice
trembling with fright.\par

Job arrested his descent till his gun
was reloaded; then, when his captive
slid to the ground, he quickly tied his
hands behind with a fathom of cord,
one end of which he held. Then he
removed the woolen sash from the
Canadian’s waist and bound it about
his mouth.\par

A glance upon the lake showed the
boat half-way across, and approaching
as fast as two pairs of oars could impel
it. Job hurried his man into an
evergreen thicket some twenty yards
away, and, leaving him tied to a tree
in charge of the hound, he stealthily
returned to ascertain if possible
whether the nature of the alarm had
been comprehended by the soldiers.
The boat drew rapidly toward the
place where he lay concealed, and, at
a little distance, the occupants lay
upon their oars while they held consultation,
so near that he could hear
every word of it.\par

“Well, boys,” said the sergeant in
command, “whathiver it was, Hi don’t
hear nothink more of it. But Hi’ll
’ail the shore. ’Ello there, whathiver
is the row?” An answer was silently
awaited till the echoes died away.\par

“Ah’t was some o’ thim Yankee
divils huntin’ just,” said one of the
soldiers, “and that’s all about it.
Divil a word could I make out but
the dog yowlin’ an’ a man phillalooin’,
an’ thin the shot. They kilt whativer
they was at an’ thin wint away.”\par

“Hi believe you’re right, Murphy,
an’ we’ll no bother to go ashore, but
just pull back and report to the captain,”
and off went the boat to the
western shore.\par

With a sigh of relief Job sped back
to his prisoner, to whom he motioned
the homeward way, and set forth with
him in front at a break-neck pace,
which was occasionally quickened by
a punch of the gun muzzle in the rear,
and so was the captive driven to the
camp.\par

Ticonderoga’s evening gun had long
since boomed its vesper thunder, and
the shadows of evening were thickening
into night in the forest, when Job
emerged from them into the glare of
the camp fire with his hound and prisoner,
and received the warm commendations
of Allen and his associates
for his promptly and skilfully performed
exploit.\par

“I don’t claim no credit for’t. It
was all Gabe’s doin’s, an’ if I’d left
him tied up to hum as I laid out to,
our cake would all ’a’ ben dough.”\par

“Here, Newton, here’s your man.
Put him under guard with that Tory,
Toombs,” said Allen.\par

A tall man of noble, commanding
presence, but of a quiet, modest mien,
stooped to caress the hound. “Why,”
he said, “it’s one of Sunderland’s
dogs, that haven’t their equal in New
England.”\par

“You’ve got an eye for houn’ dogs,
Capt’n Warner. He sartain is one o’
them dogs an’ll foller anything he’s
told to, though ’t ain’t no gre’t trick
to track a Canuck more’n an Injin.
They’re both strong-scented critters.”\par

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CHAPTER XV—LEADERS AND GUIDE}

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{\noindent}
Even while Nathan watched Gabe
and his master depart into the forest
southward, he became aware the assemblage
was moved by some new
object of interest. Turning, he saw
Colonel Allen and another gentleman,
eagle-eyed, eagle-beaked, in handsome
military dress, talking angrily in the
midst of an excited group. At length
Allen turned his passionate face toward
the men and called in a loud voice:\par

“Men, fall in for a moment. Here,”
waving his hand toward his companion,
as the men rapidly fell into
line, “is Mr. Benedict Arnold. He
bears a colonel’s commission from the
Connecticut Committee of Safety, and
claims the right to command you to-night.
Men of the Green Mountains,
whom do you follow—Arnold or
Allen?”\par

“Allen, Allen,” came in response,
loud and decided.\par

The chosen chief turned a triumphant
smile upon his rival, who strode
away in silence of restrained passion.
Soon returning, however, he addressed
Allen in a clear, steady voice:\par

“Sir, I submit to the will of these
men, but let me be a volunteer in this
glorious enterprise. The Green Mountain
Boys and their famous leader are
too generous to refuse this.”\par

Allen, touched at a vulnerable point,
grasped the speaker’s hand heartily
and answered:\par

“Indeed, so brave a man as I well
know you to be, is most welcome,
and, by the Great Jehovah, if the men
don’t object, you shall be second in
command.”\par

A shout of approval went up from
the men, who gathered around their
camp fires again, while Allen and
Arnold, together with Warner, walked
apart in amicable consultation. Soon
the first called loudly for any information
concerning a lad named Nathan
Beeman. At the sound of his name,
Nathan started, blushed, hesitated,
and then stepped bashfully forward,
and was quickly recognized by Allen
in spite of his added stature.\par

“Here, this is the youngster, Colonel
Arnold, that Mr. John Brown
tells of in this paper, whom he saw
and conversed with last winter about
Ticonderoga.”\par

The two colonels then asked the
boy many questions about the Fort,
its entrance, the interior, the number
of the garrison, and the disposal of the
sentinels. Evidently satisfied with
his straightforward replies, Allen said,
low and impressively:\par

“You have such a chance to serve
your country as don’t often fall to a
boy. Will you lead us into the Fort
to-night? Will you do it faithfully?”\par

Nathan looked steadily into the
earnest, searching eyes fixed upon
him, but did not answer.\par

“Speak,” cried Allen, sharply.\par

“If the commandant’s lady won’t
be hurt, I will,” he said at last, his
left hand thrust into his pocket, fumbling
his cherished shilling piece.\par

Allen laughed good-humoredly.
“So the lady is a friend of yours.
Well, never fear. We may disturb
her morning nap, but she shall not be
harmed. We are not waging war in
the wilderness against women and
children. Here, my boy, stick this
twig of hemlock in your hat. Don’t
you see we’ve all mounted it? There,
now,” as he himself put the evergreen
sprig in Nathan’s hatband, “you wear
the Green Mountain Boy’s cockade.
See that you never disgrace it.”\par

The boy thrilled with pride as he
walked with measured step behind the
stately chieftain and his lithely built
companion. Presently the sound of
oars was heard and a large batteau
swept into the landing, navigated by
two of Newton’s sons, who gleefully
related how, with a jug of rum, they
had lured Skeene’s old negro with the
coveted craft into their toils, as he
was voyaging homeward from Crown
Point. It was capable of carrying
twenty-five persons and was a welcome
prize. Though one by one, and
in little flotillas, boats continued to
arrive, still, at two o’clock in the early
May morning, there were not enough
to transport half the men gathered.
After brief consultation, it was determined
that as many as possible should
at once cross to the other shore and
there await the coming of the others
in the returning boats.\par

Embarkation began at once under
the superintendence of Allen, Arnold,
and Warner. Nathan found himself
with the first two in the leading boat,
Warner being left in charge of the
party remaining on the eastern shore.
At a low word of command, the flotilla
swept out of the flickering glare
of the fire into the darkness. It
passed down the creek and was soon
upon the lake, heading for the other
shore, being guided to the chosen
landing by the mountain peaks that
loomed black against the western sky.
The night was windless. The shrill
piping of hylas, the monotonous trill
of toads, and the rush of running brooks
filled the air. Such sounds faded out
as the middle of the lake was reached,
where nothing was heard but the light
plash of muffled oars, to rise again in
increasing volume from the other
shore.\par

As the last boat grounded on the
shelving beach, Nathan was startled
by the loud, hollow hoot of an owl,
uttered thrice, almost in his ear. A
few moments later there came, like
an echo from the distant creek, the
answer to this preconcerted signal of
safe arrival. The men quickly disembarked,
and the boats returned to
those who, under Seth Warner, were
eagerly awaiting their turn.\par

Those who had made the passage
tramped to and fro to stir their blood,
for there was a creeping chill in the
night air. The first light of dawn
was stealing up the eastern sky, the
woods and mountains showing in sharp
relief against it, yet no signs came to
strained eyes and ears of the returning
boats.\par

“The lazy-bones,” growled Allen,
forgetting the long distance. “What
has gone wrong? Daylight will betray
us if we wait much longer. What do
you say, my men—shall we wait, and
maybe lose our best chance of success,
or go on with what strength we
have?”\par

There was a murmur of universal
assent, and Allen commanded:\par

“Fall in, in three ranks!”\par

Instantly the men formed in the
order of the ranger service. “I want
no man to go against his will. You
that wish to go with me, poise arms.”
Every gun was brought to the position.\par

“Shoulder arms! Right face! Forward,
march!”\par

Before the last word was fairly given,
Arnold stepped in front of the speaker.\par

“I swear,” he cried, shaken with
his passion, “I will not yield my right.
I planned this enterprise. My money
set it on foot. I swear I will command,
and not yield my right to Ethan
Allen or the devil.”\par

There was a muttered growl of dissatisfaction
among the men, and Allen
was raging. “What shall I do with
this fellow? Put him under guard?”
he asked, turning to one of his captains.\par

“Gentlemen,” said Captain Callender,
a staid and quiet man, “for
the sake of the good cause, don’t
quarrel. Yield a little, both of you.
Share the command equally, and enter
the Fort side by side.”\par

Allen returned his half-drawn sword
to its scabbard and said bluffly: “For
the sake of the cause I agree to this.”
The Connecticut colonel sullenly assented,
and the three columns moved
briskly along the shore, led by the
two colonels marching side by side,
till, through the branches of the budding
trees, the leaders saw close before
them the walls of Ticonderoga,
looming dark and vague in the gray
of the morning.\par

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CHAPTER XVI—TICONDEROGA}

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{\noindent}
A halt was silently signalled, and
Job, the skilfullest scout of all this
band of woodsmen, was sent forward
to reconnoitre. Silently, as a ghost,
his tall figure melted into the obscurity
of dawn, and presently appeared, out
of the blur of shadows, bearing whispered
tidings that all was quiet within
the Fort, and only one sentinel carelessly
guarding the open wicket of the
main entrance.\par

A whispered word of command
drifted back along the ranks and the
troops moved forward. They mounted
a slight declivity and advanced to the
right toward the gate. Now the sentinel
could be seen pacing his beat;
now the white cross-belts and the
facings of his uniform made out, and
still he maintained his deliberate pace,
unconscious of the enemy, while, perhaps,
his thoughts were far away in
the green fields of merry England,
where the hawthorn was blooming
and the lark singing “at heaven’s
gate.”\par

The heads of the files were close
upon him when his wandering thoughts
were suddenly recalled. Too much
surprised to challenge or call an alarm,
he levelled his fusee at Allen’s towering
figure and pulled the trigger. The
life of the bold chieftain hung for an
instant in the trembling balance of
fate, but not a spark followed the
stroke of the flint. The guard turned
and fled through the open wicket with
Allen and Arnold, side by side, close
upon his heels. After them came
Nathan; and the crowding files of men
swarmed through the narrow gate in
an impetuous rush, and, guided by
the boy, onto the parade. This was
enclosed on three sides by lofty stone
barracks. Here they caught a last
glimpse of the flying sentry dodging
into a bombproof, like a woodchuck
into a hole. Another sentinel made a
bayonet thrust at Nathan, when Allen’s
sword fell quick as a thunderbolt upon
the man’s head in a downright blow
that must have cleft the skull, had it
not glanced on a metal comb that
held his hair in place.\par

The assailants quickly formed in
two ranks, facing outward upon the
east and west lines of barracks, and
gave three cheers that made the gray
walls ring with quick, rebounding
echoes.\par

“Quick, my boy, show me the
commandant’s quarters,” said Allen,
and his guide led to a flight of outer
stairs arising to the upper story of the
south barracks. Ascending them,
Allen shouted:\par

“Come forth, commandant, come
forth.” But receiving no answer he
thundered on the door with the pommel
of his sword and shouted still
louder:\par

“Come out of your hole, you
damned old skunk,” and thereupon
the door was drawn a little ajar. Allen
flung it wide open, and disclosed the
bewildered face and undignified figure
of Captain Delaplace, clad only in his
shirt and nightcap, with his breeches
in his hand. Behind him stood his
night-gowned wife, her pretty face
pale with alarm. For a moment the
captain gaped at his unceremonious
visitor.\par

“Who are you and what do you
want?”\par

“I want the Fort and all it contains.
Surrender, instantly.”\par

“Surrender? Is this a mad joke or
treason?”\par

“Neither; but honest men claiming
their own. Surrender.”\par

“In whose name? By whose authority?”
asked Delaplace, assured
of the earnestness of the summons.\par

“In the name of the Great Jehovah
and the Continental Congress.”\par

“I know no such authority.”\par

“Sir, do you deny the authority of
the King of Kings? And Congress
seemeth to have some power here this
morning. Waste no more time. We
are four to your one. Do you surrender?”\par

“I see no choice. But it consoles
me that you rebels will hang for this.”\par

“You are welcome to the consolation
of the hope, but it gives me no
uneasiness and I run no new risks.
I am Ethan Allen. You may have
heard of me and have lusted for the
shekels the sons of Belial offer for my
head. But get on your clothes and
parade your men without arms. Madam,”
bowing low to the lady, “pardon
the intrusion, but my business is
urgent. Permit me to close the door.”
So doing he awaited the reappearance
of the commandant.\par

“This is a pretty kettle of fish,”
the chopfallen captain groaned.
“Courage, my dear; this handsome
giant has something of the manners
of a gentleman, and will not let a lady
be maltreated by his rebel band.”\par

“Oh, William, the Fort surprised,
and we prisoners, and not a blow
struck for defense.”\par

“There could be no defense with
such numbers. Well, there’s no use
crying over spilt milk. Did you see
that pet cub of yours with the big
rebel? What did I tell you?” said
the captain, putting the finishing
touches to his hasty toilet.\par

He rejoined Allen and proceeded
to the parade, where, presently, he
mustered his little force without arms
and formally delivered them to the
captors, who marched them away to
their quarters under guard. Two
days later, with an armed escort, they
were on their way through the wilderness
to Connecticut, and Nathan saw
the last of the lady of the Fort.\par

Warner and the remainder of the
men arrived at Ticonderoga soon after
its surrender, disappointed that they
had not participated in its achievement.\par

Still guided by the boy, the officers
made a tour of investigation, which
revealed a wealth of guns and ammunition—supplies
greatly needed by
the army of patriots then gathered at
Boston. As the boy listened to the
rejoicings, his heart was full of proud
thankfulness that he had borne so important
if humble a part in this service
of his country.\par

Warren and Sunderland and a hundred
men set forth for the easy conquest
of Crown Point and its insignificant
garrison, while, on Lake George,
another party took possession of Fort
George and its garrison of a man, his
wife, and a dog.\par

Arnold hastily fitted out a schooner
taken at Skeenesborough, and, with
Allen in a batteaus filled with armed
men, sailed down the lake to capture
the British sloop at St. Johns. Job’s
knowledge of the lake, gained in years
of ranger service upon it, made him
valuable as pilot, in which capacity he
accompanied Allen; and where Job
went there went Nathan. The brisk
south wind swiftly wafted Arnold’s
craft far in advance of her sluggish
consort, whose crew saw their chances
of glory lessening and fading with the
white wings of the schooner.\par

The voyage was a pleasant one to
Nathan, for beyond the mouth of
Otter Creek everything was new to
him, with strange and changing shores
and such an expanse of water as he
had never seen. His old friend pointed
out to him notable landmarks and
scenes of past adventure. Here was
the cleft promontory of So-baps-kwa
and the opposite headland of Ko-zo-aps-kwa,
there the solitary rock of
Wo-ja-hose. Then they passed the
isles of the Four Winds and Valcour,
and Grand Isle’s low, wooded shore
stretching along the eastward water
line. At last, as they were nearing
the northern end of the lake and saw
on their right the ruin of an old French
windmill, the only vestige of civilized
occupation they had seen except the
ruins of Fort St. Anne on Isle la
Motte, they descried two sail rapidly
bearing down toward them from the
north before the shifted wind.\par

For a few moments they were in
an excitement of alarm, not knowing
whether these were friends or foes.
Soon Allen, who had been watching
through a glass, lowered it, and, waving
his cocked hat above his head,
shouted:\par

“Hurrah, boys, it’s our friends with
the British sloop. Give her three
cheers.”\par

While the last lusty cheer was
scarcely uttered, an answering salute
from the cannon of the sloop and
schooner was thundered forth.\par

“Give ’em powder for powder, boys.
Fire,” Allen shouted, and a rattling
volley of muskets, rifles, and long
smoothbores reawakened the echoes.\par

The crew of the batteau was then
transferred to the schooner and her
prize—the same armed sloop Nathan
so well remembered seeing when she
brought supplies to the Fort he had
just borne a part in surprising. While
amid loud rejoicings the story of her
bloodless capture was told, they went
merrily bowling homeward with the
clumsy batteau surging along in tow
at such speed as she had never known
before.\par

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CHAPTER XVII—HOME COMING}

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{\noindent}
As the sloop swept past the massive
battlements of Crown Point where
they guard the narrowing channel of
the lake, Job said to his young comrade:\par

“We’re getting towards home.”\par

“Yes, I’ve been thinking of home
and mother and sis. Guess I needn’t
be afraid of ol’ Toombs any longer,
but I don’t know as I could keep my
hands off’n him. I always meant to
give him a thrashing when I could.”\par

“Mebby you could, now, but he’s
a cordy critter and a soople one; but
mind what I tell you, you never will.”\par

Nathan’s answer was a short, incredulous
laugh, as he helped Job
make ready for disembarkation. As
they marched in straggling ranks
toward Fort Ticonderoga, Nathan
was accosted by one of the young
Newtons, who had remained there
during the northern expedition.\par

“Look a-here, Nate,” he said, drawing
him aside, “there’s some trouble
to your mother’s. She’s sent word
for you to come right home. Old
Toombs is dead or run off to Canerdy,
or something. I don’t know the rights
on’t. But, anyhow, she wants you
bad.”\par

Either the death or the absconding
of his stepfather was too good news
to be true, and his first duty was to
serve his mother. He and Job readily
obtained leave of absence, though it
was scarcely needed, so lax was the
military discipline of the crudely
organized forces. The two at once
set forth, and an hour’s paddling of
the light birch canoe brought them
to the landing in the creek.\par

As they emerged from the shadow
of the woods into the broad sunlight
of the clearing, their first glance
sought the house standing in the
midst of green grass and springing
grain. The scene was in such apparent
peace and quietude as it might
have been lapped, if all the turmoil
of war and strife were a thousand
miles removed. As Nathan’s eyes
ran over the familiar fields in which
he had spent so many hours in the
companionship of his father, his heart
was softened with the sad and solemn
memory. Then it hardened in a fire
of wrath that flamed up at the remembrance
of what he had suffered
from his father’s successor, and he felt
if he should meet the wretch he would
wreak summary vengeance upon him.\par

Soon they were at the open door
and looking in upon the homely kitchen.
It was empty but for the figure
of a man slouching inertly in an armchair
before the fireplace. There was
no mistaking the shock of grizzled
red hair, nor the brawny shoulders,
though they were stooped and curved
together.\par

The light tread of Nathan’s moccasined
feet did not disturb the melancholy
figure, with its drooping head
and vacant eyes staring into the fire,
nor did it move till he laid his hand
on its shoulder. Then the face turned
upon him a slow, dazed stare, that as
slowly kindled into recognition, then
froze into a rigid glare of inexpressible
terror. An inarticulate cry came from
the white lips, while the helpless form
strove to arouse itself from the living
death of palsy.\par

Nathan cast upon Job a look of
appalled, beseeching inquiry. As he
met its answer in the awed face of his
friend, resentment of past injuries
faded out of his heart, as he realized
that a mighty hand had forestalled
his revenge, and he felt nothing but
pity for the abject being that crouched
before him.\par

“It’s come out about as I told you,”
said Job, “but I wan’t expectin’
nothin’ like this, poor critter. He
thinks you’re a spirit come to haunt
him.” Then he called loudly to the
figure, “It’s the boy. It’s Nathan,
alive and well. Don’t be afeared, he
won’t hurt ye.”\par

There were footsteps at the threshold,
and Ruth and Martha entered,
pausing a moment with wondering
faces, which presently kindled with
joy, and Nathan was clasped in their
arms. When the first flush of joyful
meeting was spent, Ruth explained in
answer to her son’s whispered question
and his nod toward the dumb figure:\par

“He sort o’ broke down after the
guard went away, an’ t’other day we
found him all of a heap down by a big
hemlock log that he never got round
to cut up. He hain’t seemed to sense
much since. He’s been dreadful worried
about you, Nathan, all along,
ever since you went away.”\par

She did not know the terrible cause
of the speechless self-condemnation
the wretch had suffered, nor did she
ever learn it.\par

“I wouldn’t tell her,” counselled
Job. “She’d feel bad, an’ that
wouldn’t pay any more’n it does to
nurse a grudge. Vengeance don’t
belong to us, poor critters.”\par

Thenceforth, till Silas Toombs sank
from his living death to eternal sleep
not long after this, his stepson gave
him thoughtful and kindly care.\par

At length the young frontiersman
took his place among the defenders of
his country. By the side of his old
comrade and guardian, he fought in
the losing fight of Hubbardton and
helped to win the glorious victory of
Bennington. Yet he is best remembered
by the descendants of the old
Green Mountain Boys as the guide
who led their fathers in the conquest
of Ticonderoga.\par

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Where once stood the pioneer’s log
house, spacious farm buildings now
stretch their comfortable quarters.
From it, away to the southwest, across
meadows, thrifty homesteads, low
woodlands, and the narrowed waters
of Lake Champlain can be seen rising
against the foothills of the Adirondacks
the hoary ruins of Ticonderoga.
Within the house, upon a pair of massive
moose horns, rests the old flintlock
once filled with beans, “good
enough for Yorkers,” and later loaded
with a leaden death message for Tory
and Hessian. Cherished with as fond
pride by its fair possessor, is a worn
pocket-piece—the silver shilling given
her ancestor by the beautiful lady of
Fort Ticonderoga.\par

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Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to subscribe
to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.\par\bookmark[level=1,page=1]{Contents}
\bookmark[level=2,dest=chapter-icoming-into-the-wilderness]{CHAPTER I—COMING INTO THE WILDERNESS}
\bookmark[level=2,dest=chapter-iithe-new-home]{CHAPTER II—THE NEW HOME}
\bookmark[level=2,dest=chapter-iiia-visit-to-the-fort]{CHAPTER III—A VISIT TO THE FORT}
\bookmark[level=2,dest=chapter-ivthe-new-hampshire-grants]{CHAPTER IV—THE NEW HAMPSHIRE GRANTS}
\bookmark[level=2,dest=chapter-vthe-evergreen-sprig]{CHAPTER V—THE EVERGREEN SPRIG}
\bookmark[level=2,dest=chapter-vithe-yorkers]{CHAPTER VI—THE YORKERS}
\bookmark[level=2,dest=chapter-viithe-judgment-seat]{CHAPTER VII—THE “JUDGMENT SEAT”}
\bookmark[level=2,dest=chapter-viiia-novel-bear-trap]{CHAPTER VIII—A NOVEL BEAR TRAP}
\bookmark[level=2,dest=chapter-ixa-frontier-tragedy]{CHAPTER IX—A FRONTIER TRAGEDY}
\bookmark[level=2,dest=chapter-xrebellion]{CHAPTER X—REBELLION}
\bookmark[level=2,dest=chapter-xiescape]{CHAPTER XI—ESCAPE}
\bookmark[level=2,dest=chapter-xiia-free-life]{CHAPTER XII—A FREE LIFE}
\bookmark[level=2,dest=chapter-xiiiforebodings-of-storm]{CHAPTER XIII—FOREBODINGS OF STORM}
\bookmark[level=2,dest=chapter-xivgabriels-good-service]{CHAPTER XIV—GABRIEL’S GOOD SERVICE}
\bookmark[level=2,dest=chapter-xvleaders-and-guide]{CHAPTER XV—LEADERS AND GUIDE}
\bookmark[level=2,dest=chapter-xviticonderoga]{CHAPTER XVI—TICONDEROGA}
\bookmark[level=2,dest=chapter-xviihome-coming]{CHAPTER XVII—HOME COMING}
\hbox{}
\end{document}

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