often, to do right well. James nor we can’t come from the field to feed
him, Maria can’t do it because she’s at school all day. What shall we
do?”

“I’ll feed him twice in the forenoon and twice in the afternoon, a
little at a time and often is the way, and then you and James can feed
him morning, noon and night.”

After a few days’ feeding with her fingers, Mrs. Whitman nailed a teat
made of rags and leather to the bottom of the trough, and the colt would
suck that. All she had to do then was to pour the milk into the trough.

No one could have witnessed without emotion the wealth of affection
lavished upon that colt by James. Much as he loved the children there
was always a little feeling of restraint, and a little distance
pervading their intercourse on his part. Bertie and Maria would put
their arms around his neck and hug him, but he never returned their
caresses.

Not so, however, in regard to the colt, the only pet he ever had, the
only live thing that had ever called out the childhood feelings and
sympathies of his nature so long dormant, and which they now fastened
upon and clung to in their entire strength and freshness.

In the morning, before the rest were stirring, he would fondle and talk
to it by the half hour. As the little creature grew stronger and
playful, and could lick meal and eat potatoes and bread, James would put
bread in his waistcoat pocket and lie down on the barn floor, sometimes
he would put there maple sugar, then the colt, smelling the delicacies,
would root them out with his nose, and as he became earnest get down on
his knees and lick the lining of the pocket, and turn it out to get the
sugar.

Just back of the house was a piece of grass ground extremely fertile,
with a great willow in the centre of it. An acre of this was fenced and
reserved for a pasture in which to turn the horses to bait when work
pressed, and it was important to have them near at hand. In this pasture
James put the colt when he was old enough to feed, and there he would
frisk and caper and roll and try to act out the horse, and when tired
lie under the great willow, stretched out at full length as though he
was dead or sound asleep. Whenever James came in sight he would cry for
him, and when the other horses came in from work there would be a vocal
concert vigorously sustained on both sides.

“Poor little thing,” said Bert, “he’s lonesome, why don’t you turn him
into the pasture with the other horses? He wants somebody to talk with
him that can understand his language. I would, James.”

“I’m afraid to, he won’t know any better than to run right up to them,
and they will bite or kick him; perhaps they’ll all take after him, get
him into a ring and pen him in the corner of the fence and kill him.”

“Put one of ‘em in his place, and let us see what they will do.”

They turned old Frank in, the colt ran right up and began to smell of
him. Frank smelt of the colt, seemed glad to meet, and did not offer to
bite or kick him. Frank was just from work, hungry and wanted to feed,
but the colt wouldn’t let him, kept thrusting his nose in Frank’s face
and bothering him, when the old horse gave him a nip, taking the larger
portion of the colt’s neck into his great mouth. The little creature
screamed with pain and ran off, but soon came back and began feeding
close by, just as Frank did, the latter taking no further notice of him.

“They’ll do well enough,” said Mr. Whitman, who was looking on. “Frank
won’t hurt him, he was only teaching him manners, you can leave ‘em
together.”

They eventually became great friends, and after they had fed to the full
would stand in the corner of the fence or under the willows, the colt
nestled under Frank’s breast, and the latter with his head over the
colt’s back.

The colt would follow James like a dog; and sometimes when Frank would
take a notion not to be caught James would call the colt to him and
start for the barn, and the old horse would follow them right into the
stable.

Mr. Whitman had an offer for wheat at a high price, and kept Mr. Conly
and hired another man (as he had two barn floors) to help thresh,
threshing being then all done with the flail, or else the grain was
trampled out by cattle. The evenings were now getting to be quite long.
James therefore began to study, and Mr. Conly assisted him and heard him
recite. This was a golden opportunity for James, and he made the most of
it. While devoting every leisure moment to study, James was not
unmindful of his crop, there was not a weed to be seen among his
potatoes, and I should not dare to say how many times the fingers of
James and Bertie and Maria had been thrust into the hills on a voyage of
discovery, and their conclusions, as reported by Maria to her mother,
were most satisfactory. The soil indeed was full of great cracks, caused
by the growth and crowding of the potatoes.

When Mr. Whitman found that Mr. Conly was disposed to assist James, and
that James fully appreciated the privilege, he so arranged his work as
to afford him every possible opportunity, and the boys were ever ready
to take an additional burden upon themselves for the same purpose. One
evening Arthur Nevins came in to see the boys, and said he had been to
the mill that day and saw a notice posted up that Calvin Barker was
buying potatoes for a starch mill, and would pay cash and a fair price
for first-rate potatoes sound and sorted, no cut ones. Potatoes were
cheap, there was not much of a market for them, and the traders would
pay but part cash and the rest in goods.

“Now is your chance, James,” said the grandfather, “you want the money
and don’t want goods.”

They brought only seventeen cents per bushel, but there were one hundred
and sixteen bushels and a half, and after returning a bushel and one
half to Mr. Whitman to replace the seed received of him, and paying
Bertie for the colt, James had eighteen dollars and fifty cents left. In
addition to this were several bushels of small and cut potatoes that he
put in the cellar to give the colt.

Barker paid James in silver, and after reaching home he piled the coins
up on the table and gazed at them with a sort of stupid wonder. Never
before had he at one time possessed more than two shillings, seldom
that,—more frequently a few pennies for holding a horse, opening a gate,
or doing some errand for the men in the glass-house, and he counted them
over and over.

James now knew the value of a dollar in theory, how many cents there
were in a dollar, and how many mills in a cent; and yet he had little
more conception of its practical value than a red Indian, for he had not
received any wages nor bought anything above the value of a penny loaf
or a bit of cheese. At length, looking up wistfully in the face of Mr.
Whitman, he asked,—

“How much would all these dollars buy?”

“According to what you might buy. They would buy a good deal of some
articles and not much of others; they would buy about twenty-four
bushels of wheat and thirty of corn, but they would not buy a great deal
of coffee, or indigo, or broadcloth, or silk.”

“I’d buy a gun and lots of powder and shot,” said Bertie.

“Would it buy any land, Mr. Whitman?”

“Yes.”

“How much?”

“That would depend upon circumstances. In the western part of Ohio, of
wild land, one hundred and eighty acres—more than half as much as I have
got here.”

“O my! how much is an acre? I know what the arithmetic says, one hundred
and sixty square poles. But how big a piece is it?”

“That little pasture where the colt is measures about an acre. One of
those dollars would buy ten pieces of land as big as that pasture out
there; but you must recollect it is wild land, all woods, no house, no
road: you have to cut the trees down before you can grow anything on
it.”

“I know grandfather has told me ‘twas just so once where this house
stands. But would it buy any land here?”

“Yes, it will buy an acre, buy two, perhaps three of some land; of most
land it would not buy one.”

“It would buy a yoke of little steers, and quite a lot of sheep.”

“But why don’t you buy a gun? You love to shoot,” said Bertie.

“I mean to save my money to buy land.”

“That’s right, James,” said grandfather, “then you will have something
under your feet that will last as long as you will, and longer, too. Not
that I would say that it don’t pay a man who can shoot to buy a gun; but
every thing in its place.”

James had now something to put in his chest, and went up stairs to
deposit the money there. When he came back Mr. Conly explained to him
the source of values, and told him that land became valuable by being
settled, made accessible by roads, productive of crops and cattle, and
by mills being built to grind the grain and manufacture the timber.

“When I go trading, James, I’ll take you with me, and then you will
learn the prices of things, and after a while I’ll send you to trade as
I often do Peter and Bertie,” said Mr. Whitman.

Mr. Whitman now said to James and his sons,—

“I think I shall turn out about two acres of the field to pasture, and
take in as much more of woodland. I can get the land cleared and fenced
with logs by giving the first crop; but if you three boys wish to take
the job, I’ll give you the crop for three years; but you must keep the
sprouts down and the fire-weed and pigeon-weed, and you may keep the
ground you now have the use of two years more.”

They all said they would do it.

“That,” said Peter, “will be to become backwoodsmen, and do just what
grandfather did, and we’ll make a chopping bee.”

“No, we won’t; we’ll do it ourselves. If we are to be beholden to the
neighbors, I won’t have anything to do with it. I should be ashamed if
we three could not do what your grandfather when he was young would have
done alone, and not thought it a hard task either,” said James.

“So I say,” replied Bertie, “do it ourselves.”

“But how shall we find out how to do it quickest, and to the best
advantage?” said James.

“Father will show us,” said Peter.

“Here sits a venerable gentleman,” said Bertie, making a magnificent
gesture in the direction of his grandparent, “who can show us better
than father.”

Bertie was prone to be grandiloquent at times, and he had just been
reading Patrick Henry’s celebrated speech, and committing it to memory.
He then asked his grandfather what time of the year was the best to do
it.

“The best time to do it is in June, because then the stumps will bleed
freely and be less likely to sprout, and the leaves will draw the sap
out of the bodies of the trees and dry them, so that they will burn
better, and the leaves will dry and help to burn them; but you can’t do
it then, because it will be right in hoeing time; you will have to do it
after harvest, and let it lie over till the next summer.”

“Then,” said James, “we shall not get any crop, not even the second
year.”

“You will get a crop into the ground the second year, and harvest it the
third, though you may get a crop the second year, but in the meantime
you will keep the ground you have now and be getting something from
that. If it should prove a dry summer you could burn it in June of the
second year, and sow it with spring rye or barley, and if you get a good
burn, an extra burn, you might venture to put in corn, for a crop comes
along master fast on a burn, the hot ashes start it right along.”

“I don’t think,” said James, “we had better try to burn it till after
wheat harvest, as we shall have the other pieces, and it would interfere
so seriously with Mr. Whitman’s work, that if he was willing I shouldn’t
be.”

The old gentleman now told James there was another way in which he might
earn something for himself; he might shoot the coons that would be
getting into the corn in the moonlight nights, and when there was no
moon he might tree them with the dog, and shoot them by torchlight, and
the hatters at the village would buy the skins. There was a pond in the
pasture where there were plenty of muskrats.

“How do you get the muskrats?”

“This time of year set traps in the edge of the water for them; in the
winter they make houses among the flags at the edge of the pond and go
to sleep like flies, then you can catch ‘em in their houses. You can now
shoot very well with a rifle, and if it was not for going to school you
might in the winter get a wolf or a bear; a wolf’s pelt would bring two
dollars, but a good bearskin would bring twenty, more than all the
potatoes you worked so hard to raise. But no doubt you might trap a fox
or two, and their skins bring a good price.”

“But where should I get a trap?”

“Come along with me.”

The old gentleman took James into the chamber over the workshop and
opened a chest, in which were traps of all sizes and adapted to catch
different animals, from a mink to a wolf or bears; there were but two of
the latter but great numbers of the others, all clean and oiled, and in
excellent order. He then opened a closet in which were chains to fasten
the traps to prevent the animals from taking them away, and clogs, and
broad chisels on long handles. The latter, the old gentleman told him,
were ice chisels to cut ice around the beaver lodges in the winter.

“When I was younger, I used to leave Jonathan and the other boys to take
care at home in the winter, and I and old Vincent Maddox used to take a
hoss each, and traps, and rifles, and go over the Ohio river and trap
and hunt sometimes till planting time, and sometimes I took one of my
own boys. It’s a kind of pleasure to me to clean up the old traps, and
repair ‘em, and look ‘em over, brings back old times, though I never
expect to use ‘em much more ‘cept perhaps to take a fox or an otter.”

“Did Mr. Whitman use to go with you?”

“No, Jonathan never took much to such things. He’s all for farming, but
my William, who’s settled in the wilderness on the Monongahela, was full
of it from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot. He’s a chip of
the old block. But Jonathan is right, farming pays the best now; but in
those days if you raised anything there was no market for what you could
not eat, and trapping and hunting, and killing Indians for the bounty on
their scalps were all the ways to get a dollar.”

Peter and Bertie liked well enough to watch for and kill coons in the
corn or on the trees for a few hours in pleasant moonlight nights, but
did not possess that innate hunter’s spirit that reconciled them
patiently to bear hunger, cold and watching to circumvent their game;
but James did, and his former life of poverty, hunger and outdoor
exposure with but scanty clothing had rendered him almost insensible to
cold and wet, and he embraced every opportunity that was offered him to
shoot or trap. Besides coons and muskrats, he shot, on the bait afforded
by a dead sheep, two silver-gray foxes, and caught one cross fox and two
silver-grays in traps that the old gentleman told him how to set. His
greatest exploit and one that elicited the praises of grandfather, was
in the latter part of winter, trapping an otter, that brought him twelve
dollars.

The elder Whitman instructed him in the right methods of stretching and
curing the skins, and sent them to Philadelphia to a fur dealer with
whom he had dealt a great many years, and James received for what he
took alone, and half of those he obtained in company with Peter and
Bertie, sixty-eight dollars.

                              CHAPTER XVI.
                          A YEAR OF HAPPINESS.

The success of James in trapping did by no means overshadow his love for
the soil, neither did it lead him to neglect his studies, nor cool his
affection for the colt. A quart of oats every night, and potatoes,
Sunday morning, with plenty of hay, made the animal grow finely.

This winter James so excelled in writing that the master employed him to
set the copies. Everything passed along pleasantly in the school; James
mingled freely with the scholars in their diversions, and even Morse,
Riggs, and Orcutt forgot the old grudge, or pretended they had. He
likewise so far conquered his reserve as to spend a sociable evening
where he was invited; went through the arithmetic, and took surveying by
the advice of the old gentleman, who told him it would put many a dollar
in his pocket if he could run land, and he could in no other way get it
so easily, especially if he ever went into a newly settled place.

In short, it was the happiest winter James had ever passed; time seemed
to take to itself wings, and he could hardly realize it was March when
March came.

As the time for work upon the land drew near, James said to Mr.
Whitman,—

“I don’t think you need to hire a man this summer; the boys are some
older. I have got the run of the work, and have learned to cradle grain
as well as to reap. I think we can do the work.”

“It is poor economy to have barely help enough to get along, providing
the weather is just what you would wish. I shall plough less, and dress
heavier than I have done; that will leave less ground to go over. I
think we can get along till hay and wheat harvest, then I will hire
George Kendrick; he can spread, rake, build the loads of hay, tie up
grain, and reap a little; he’s but a boy, and won’t want much wages.”

Although they could not set to work upon their new land till autumn, the
boys were teasing their father to go and measure it, and their
grandfather said it was a pleasant day, and he would go with them.

When the boys came to see how large a piece of land was contained in a
measure of two acres, and how near together the trees were, their
courage cooled a little.

“If we are to cut all these trees,” said James, “snow will fly before we
get half done.”

“You haven’t got to cut half of ‘em clear off. If I was twenty years
younger I could fall the whole and lop off the large limbs, and burn and
pile it in eight weeks.”

When the time came to clear their land, the old gentleman went with
them, and spotted a great oak with long spreading limbs.

“That’s the _driver_; that’s not to be cut yet.”

He then spotted a great number of trees in a line before it, and in a
space as wide as the branches of the great tree extended. He then
directed the boys to cut the tree nearest the drive-tree nearly off, and
the next ones less, and the next less still, till the outside ones
received only a few blows.

While the boys were at work, the old gentleman began leisurely to chop
into the great tree, sitting down to rest when he liked, till he had cut
it as nearly off as was safe. This occupied him the greater part of the
forenoon, and, seating himself in the sun, he slept till James shouted
that they had cut all the spotted trees.

“Then come here, all of you.”

The great oak stood at the summit of gently descending ground. Directly
before it was a clump of enormous pines, which the boys had been
directed to chop into till they stood tottering to a fall, and before
them were some large hemlocks and sugar-trees that had been cut half
off, and below these smaller trees that had received but a few blows of
the axe.

All were now assembled at the foot of the oak. A few well-directed
strokes from the old gentleman’s axe, it began to nod, and small, dead
limbs to fall from it; then came a short, sharp crack. Slowly it
toppled, and seemed but to touch the trunks of the tall pines that stood
seventy feet to a limb, when down they went with a tremendous roar upon
the hemlocks, and the whole avalanche, smoking and cracking, plunged
right down the descent into the mixed growth below: leaves, limbs, and
bark flew high into the air, a wide lane was opened through the forest,
as when a discharge of grape ploughs through a column of infantry; the
very earth shook with the concussion, and the sunlight broke in where it
had not shone for a hundred years.

Bertie leaped upon the trunk of the great oak, and swinging his hat,
shouted,—

“Hoorah, grandfather, you know how to do it, don’t you?”

“I should be a dull scholar if I didn’t, considering how much experience
and practice I’ve had.”

Scores of trees were prostrated, some torn up by the roots, others shorn
of their branches, and sure to die when scorched by the clearing fire,
others broken off at various heights. The trees broken off or stripped
of their branches were not cut down, as, casting no shade, they did not
interfere with the crop, but were left to rot down.

Finding the labor so much less than they had anticipated, the boys set
to work with resolution, and before the ground froze, cut the trees,
lopped the larger branches, and cleared up the work of the season. James
raised three bushels of potatoes more than the previous year, and
obtained two cents a bushel more for them of the same buyer.

The Whitmans all possessed musical ability. Mr. Whitman and his wife
sang in the choir till they were married; and the children, though they
had received no training, and could not read music, all sang by rote;
and soon after school began, Bertie made a new discovery. One of the
cows that he milked had spells of holding up her milk, and caused much
inconvenience.

“I’ll swap cows with you, Bertie,” said James; “you milk my old
line-back, and I’ll milk the black cow; perhaps she’ll give down her
milk better to me.”

The black cow after this gave down her milk, which was for some time a
great puzzle to Bertie and Peter, although their parents said it was
because James milked faster, and it was easier to the cow.

James was the first to rise, and generally had his cows nearly milked by
the time the rest got into the yard, and was ready either to work among
his potatoes or to sit down to study till breakfast was ready, and the
black cow was always milked before Bertie got along.

Bert imagined James had some method of charming the cow, and resolved to
find out, so getting up before light he hid himself in the barn.
By-and-by James came out and sitting down to the cow leaned his head
against her and began to sing an old folk ditty to make a cow give down
her milk, and Bertie’s quick ear discovered to his astonishment that
James had both an ear and most excellent voice for singing, though so
great was his diffidence and power of concealment that no one of the
family had ever suspected it before. Bertie told his father and mother.

“If that is so,” said Mrs. Whitman, “let us get Walter Conly to keep a
singing school this winter, and let James and our children go, we need
better music in the church, most of the choir have sung out.”

When snow came they harnessed up the colt in a most singular vehicle
called a drag, made of rough poles, the shafts and runners being made of
the same pole. The harness they made of straw rope, which James, who had
been taught at the workhouse, showed them how to twist with an
instrument that he made, called a throw-crook. It was made of a crooked
piece of wood bent at one end and a swivel in the other end by which he
fastened it to his waist, and turned it with one hand, while one of the
boys attached the straw and walked backwards as it twisted. He told them
great use was made of these ropes in England to bind loads of hay and
grain, and to secure stacks of grain. They braided the straw to make the
saddle, and twisted hickory withes for bit and bridle. They put Bertie
and Maria on the sled and the docile creature drew them to the
schoolhouse with some help; there he was fastened in the sun beneath the
lee of the woods and fed.

When school was done at night the creature, colt-like, and limber as an
eel, had twisted round, gnawed off the straw halter, then the
shoulder-strap, which permitted the traces to fall, and then being freed
from the drag he rubbed against the tree to which he had been fastened
till he broke the girth and freed himself from the saddle; and ended by
devouring the whole harness, except the bridle, even to the reins.

“Oh, you little monkey,” cried Bertie, “if I had given you that straw at
home you would have turned up your nose at it. How do you think Maria is
going to get home? She won’t bake you any more corn cakes nor give you
any more sweet apples.”

The snow was quite deep; they put Maria on the drag, James and Peter and
the Wood boys hauled the drag, and Bertie led the colt after the
vehicle. They made another straw harness, but took care to fasten him
with a leather halter and hitch him short.

The inhabitants of the district and the scholars were so much attached
to Mr. Conly that they assessed themselves to keep the school that was
out in February through March, Mr. Whitman offering to board him the
entire month. The days were so long that James found much time to work
in the shop, both before and after school. Mr. Whitman was making a pair
of wheels, tongue and axle-tree for one of his neighbors, and finding
how much progress James had made in handling tools, availed himself of
his help. When the job was finished, James, with some aid from Mr.
Whitman, made an axle-tree, wheels and shafts, with which to break the
colt. He had just put the finishing stroke to his work by boring the
linchpin holes, and sitting down upon the axle-tree and contemplating
it, he said,—

“There, I have done all I know how to do to those wheels; I don’t know
whether they’ll run off or on, but I hope they will answer the purpose.”

The old gentleman was in the shop making a grain cradle, he viewed the
work, took off the wheels, measured the shoulder, and the taper of the
ends of the axle, and said,—

“I call that a good piece of work, and I believe those wheels will run
true as a die; you have learned something since Jonathan brought you to
our door two years ago last fall; you couldn’t have made a sled stake
then and made it right.”

“Indeed I have, grandfather, and I owe it to you, and I have often
wondered that you should take so much pains with a strange boy, and as
you may say an outcast, with neither kith nor kin.”

“I have tried to teach you some things, and chiefly those that would put
you in the way of getting your bread in this country, and the things
that I knew by experience to be both necessary and profitable to a young
man going to take up land, which is the best, safest, and in my
judgment, the happiest venture here. I have spent a great many hours
teaching you to handle a rifle, for though playing with a gun is just
time thrown away in an old settlement where there is nothing to shoot
but sparrows and robins, my family would have often gone without a meal
had it not been for my rifle; and the money that bought the greater part
of this farm came by trapping and hunting. If I could not have handled
tools I must have gone without cart or plough or harrow, for I had no
money to buy, and must have gone nine miles to borrow.

“But there is one thing more necessary for you than anything I have ever
tried to teach you, and I cannot teach it, I wish I could.”

“What is that, grandfather?”

“The grace of God, something that cannot be learned as you can learn to
line and cut the shoulder of an axle-tree to make the wheel run true, or
to work out a sum at school, and yet it is by all odds more necessary
than any and all of the things you have learned here.”

“But you never told me anything about this before.”

“Perhaps you think it strange that when I have taken so much pains from
the time you came here to teach you other things, and so many other
things, that I have never said anything about that.”

“Yes, grandfather, I do.”

“It was because I didn’t think the time had come for me to speak. I knew
you were becoming acquainted with the Scriptures, that you heard the
gospel faithfully preached every Sabbath, and that you would not then
have understood my talk, but now you know what I mean, do you not?”

“You mean what you prayed, that Peter and Bertie and Maria and I might
have, this morning at family prayers. But how can I get it? If neither
the schoolmaster nor you can teach me, and I can’t learn it myself, how
am I going to get it?”

“Beg for it. When a man has nothing to buy bread with, and can’t work,
he must beg. Get it where I got mine, on your knees.”

“But the minister says folks must feel that they are sinners, and
confess their sins and ask forgiveness in the name of the Saviour. I
don’t feel that way; don’t feel that I have got anything to confess.”

“You don’t?”

“No, sir. I can’t confess that I have lied, or sworn, got drunk, or
stolen, or broken the Sabbath, or cheated anybody, because I never have.
I know I am not bad, like the workhouse boys I was brought up with, nor
like some folks here, and I never go to bed or get up but I say the
Lord’s prayer.”

“What makes you say in the Lord’s prayer ‘forgive us our sins,’ if you
have no sins to be forgiven; and what sense was there in putting it in
the Lord’s prayer, that was made for the whole world, and you among the
rest, if you have no sin?”

“I don’t know.”

“The reason you don’t feel that you have anything to confess is that you
don’t know what’s inside of you. Everybody is the same way by nature. I
used to be.”

“What must I do then?”

“Ask the Lord to send His spirit to show yourself, and if He does, you
will see need enough to ask pardon. I hope you’ll think about it, James,
for I never was so set upon anything as I am upon this. It is not an
affair of the moment with me. I have had it in my mind from the first
spring you were here till now, and it has grown upon me of late, because
within the last six months I have begun to feel that I have not much
longer to tarry here. I don’t think I shall see the leaves fall again.”

The tears sprang into the eyes of James. He exclaimed,—

“Grandfather, don’t talk so; I can’t bear to hear you talk in that way.
You will live a good many years to make us all happy.”

“That’s impossible according to the course of nature. I have lived to
see all my children settled and making a good living, and what is more,
giving evidence of grace, though Jonathan and Alice have not as yet seen
their way clear to come forward, and I am ready to go; but I would like
to see you and Peter, Bertie and Maria, rejoicing in the Lord.”

This conversation affected James as had nothing else in the course of
his life. He loved and revered the old gentleman, and though he was
aware of his great age yet the idea of parting with him had never
crossed his mind, and when at night he repeated the Lord’s prayer as
usual, the words “forgive us our sins” were fraught with a new meaning.
He resolved to search the scriptures and find out if he was a sinner or
not.

A few days after this one half-holiday Bertie came into the shop and
hung around, sat upon the bench and whittled, a thing quite unusual, as
he had no desire to handle tools, and was seldom in the shop except
James or Peter was making something for him, at length he said,—

“Grandpa, I want you to pray for me.”

“My child, I have done that ever since you were born, but what makes you
ask me now? How do you feel?”

“I don’t know, I never felt as I have these last two days. I want to be
good. Mother says I am a good boy and so does father and the
schoolmaster, but I know I am not good the way the Bible calls good.”

“My dear boy, it is the blessed spirit that is showing you your heart.
We must both pray, for in these things one cannot take another’s place.
Tomorrow is the Sabbath day and I hope you will find pardon through the
Saviour, and that it will be the happiest Sabbath you ever spent. How
came you to turn your thoughts that way?”

“I was hurrying to get my part of the chores done before school time
when these thoughts came into my mind just like a flash, and they won’t
go away.”

After meeting on the next Sabbath, as the minister, Mr. Redman, came to
shake hands with the old gentleman as he always did, the former said,—

“Mr. Redman, if I were you at the close of the meeting to-night I would
ask any persons who felt disposed to converse on religious subjects to
tarry.”

“I don’t believe there would a single person stop. Never during my
ministry here have I seen the people as thoughtless, and Christians
themselves so indifferent; it is one to his farm and another to his
merchandise.”

“Didn’t you notice how full the meeting has been to-day and how
attentive the people were?”

“The pleasant Sabbath after several stormy ones accounts for the full
attendance, and our people usually give good attention. But what leads
you to think there is any special interest among the people?”

“The Lord has told me so.”

Mr. Redman looked anxiously into the face of his Elder, fearing that his
mind was enfeebled, but in the clear eye and compressed lips and earnest
expression of his features he saw nothing to confirm his suspicions, and
replied,—

“Although I perceive not the least reason for doing as you desire, I
will reflect upon it and if when we meet to-night you are of the same
opinion, I’ll certainly do it.”

“Will you mix a little prayer with your reflections?”

“I will.”

When Mr. Redman got home he related the affair to his wife, and inquired
if she thought there was any more thoughtfulness than usual among the
females of the parish.

“In my opinion there was never less, but I would do as Elder Whitman
requests.”

“He is a very old man and may be in his dotage. I am afraid it would
seem ridiculous and do more harm than good.”

“He has the clearest head of any man in this parish to-day, and is more
likely to know the mind of the Lord than anybody else, and I know never
would say what he did to you without a solid reason.”

Mr. Redman, a nervous person, greatly puzzled and agitated by what he
considered an unreasonable request, was unable to fix his mind upon any
definite topic of remark, and went to the meeting with very slight
preparation.

He was surprised to find the house was filled and Mr. Whitman of the
same opinion, which served to increase his agitation, and after a few,
as he felt, incoherent remarks threw the meeting open and sat down.

Mr. Whitman instantly got up and said,—

“I am an old man, about the oldest among you. I feel that I have been an
unprofitable servant and that, profitable or unprofitable, I am almost
at my journey’s end, but this is no time to depart. I would not die in
such a dead state of the church and people of God as this. My neighbors,
you must wake up, and wake up to-night. I must go and I want to carry
better tidings than it is possible to carry now. Can I face my Master,
and yours, and tell him that the wise and the foolish are slumbering
together, and that the seed his servant sows rots in the furrow because
it is not watered with the prayers of the church, and because Christian
people are more concerned to train their children to get a living than
they are to save their souls?”

He went on for half an hour, and when he sat down there were three or
four on their feet together, for his words went through the people like
an electric shock.

At the close of the meeting Mr. Redman gave the notice and more than
half of the assembly stopped. Among them was Walter Conly the
schoolmaster, his brother Edward, and sister Emily; Will Orcutt who had
come home from Reading on a visit, and his brother George; Arthur and
Elmer Nevins, John and William Edibean, and the Wood boys, Jane Gifford,
Martha Kendrick; many heads of families, Lunt the miller and Samuel
Dorset the drover. Mr. Whitman and his wife, Peter and Maria, remained,
but the grandfather saw Bertie and James go out. It gave the good old
man a heartache, and he said within himself,—

“God’s ways are not our ways, His will be done.”

That night after the old gentleman had retired to rest, Bertie crept to
his bedside and said,—

“Grandfather, the reason I did not stop to-night was I didn’t want to
talk with anybody only you, but I have prayed to God a great many times,
and asked him to take me for his child, and make me just what he wants
me to be, and somehow I feel as though he hears me.”

“Would you be ashamed to have your father and mother know how you feel?”

“I shouldn’t be ashamed to have the whole school know I am trying to be
good and be a Christian.”

A week passed away, and the old gentleman found no opportunity to talk
with James, as he was busy out of doors, and did not come into the shop,
but on Saturday evening as the former was sitting in his bedroom, James
entered and said,—

“Grandfather, I have done what you wished me to, and I have been
studying the New Testament to find out what sin is and whether I am a
sinner.”

“What did you find there?”

“I found that sin is the transgression of the law; that it is not doing
this or that, but having a wrong principle, and that I had a wrong
principle, and so there was not a bit of good in me. When I came to
cipher the thing right out, I saw that it was not because it was a sin
against God that I didn’t do as the rest in the workhouse did, but
because Mr. Holmes told me not to, and that Mr. Holmes was my God all
the while.”

“Ah! you’ve got to the bottom of it now, my boy.”

“But why did not Mr. Holmes tell me about my being a sinner, and about
pardon through the Saviour, as you have, and as Mr. Redman does?”

“Because Mr. Holmes was not only a good man, but a man of sense, all
good men don’t have common sense. You were a child then, and he did not
mean to burden your mind with things that, not understanding, you would
forget, but he knew if he told you not to lie, steal nor swear, and
taught you the commandments, that you would know what that meant, and he
put the idea of God in your mind. He knew that you loved him and would
do as you promised him you would, and that if you kept clear of those
sins it would keep your conscience alive, and that if you said the
Lord’s prayer it would give you the idea of going to God, and though you
might not understand it would finally have its effect, and as you grew
older that influence would grow stronger.”

The religious interest increased not only there, but extended to other
towns in the county, and was part of that wonderful religious movement
called “The Great Awakening” that pervaded Kentucky, was more or less
felt in every state then in the Union, and which provided Christian
pioneers for the new settlements constantly forming.

                             CHAPTER XVII.
                            REDEMPTION YEAR.

It was now planting time. James, this year, planted his patch with corn,
as he had planted it with potatoes two years, and the boys planted
potatoes. The weather proved very dry and so favorable for farm work
that the planting and sowing were finished much earlier than usual.

“Now, boys,” said Mr. Whitman, “if you handle yourselves, you can burn
your lot over and plant corn before hoeing comes on: and, after harvest,
you can knock the sprouts from the stumps and kill the fire-weeds.”

They put in the fire, and got an excellent burn.

They now determined to make a log-rolling and invite the neighbors, far
and near, to come with axes and oxen to cut and roll and twitch the
unburnt logs into great piles to be set on fire and burned entirely up.
The old gentleman was busily at work in the shop, when Maria came
running in, and said,—

“Grandpa! George Orcutt is coming up the road, and he looks as though he
was coming here.”

“I hope he is; and if he turns up here, you tell him the men-folks are
all in the field, except me, and that I am at work in the shop.”

In a few moments George came in, and was received very cordially by the
old gentleman. George said his father had broken one of the glasses in
his specs, and as he was about the age of Mr. Jonathan, but some older,
he might have a pair that he did not use, that he would lend him till he
could get another pair. He said that William was coming, but he had an
errand at Mr. Wood’s, and told his folks he would do the errand.

“There are glasses enough in the house. I don’t use ‘em; but I have got
two pair that were my father’s. Jonathan has got two pair, and Alice has
a pair that she don’t use much of any now. I was glad to see that you
stopped awhile ago after meeting. I trust you have found the hope you
sought then?”

“No, Mr. Whitman, I have not; there’s a thing stands right in the middle
of the road, and blocks the whole road up.”

“What is that?”

“You know, I suppose, what happened at school?”

“Have you any hardness against James?”

“No, sir; and I have told the Lord I am sorry, and asked his
forgiveness; but that is not satisfactory, and I don’t feel that it is
any use for me to go to my Maker till I have forgiveness of James, but I
don’t know how to bring it about.”

“I’ll fix it for you; it is only about half an hour to supper time;
you’ll stop and take supper with us?”

“I dread to go into the house.”

“Never be afraid to do right, because you will have help. But, before
you go in, I want to show you some things James has made.”

The old gentleman showed him a wheelbarrow and crossbow he had made for
Bertie, and the wheels and shafts he had made to break the colt in, and
told him that James had made himself a nice chest, dovetailed it
together, and painted it.

“Come, let us go into the house and find the specs.”

Mrs. Whitman received George in so kindly a manner that it relieved him
of much of his embarrassment.

The old gentleman told Maria, when she went to call the men-folks to
supper, to tell her father that George Orcutt was in the house and would
stop to supper.

“Boys,” said Mr. Whitman, “George Orcutt is in the house; I suppose you
can guess what has brought him here. He will feel embarrassed enough, no
doubt, and I want you all to shake hands with him as if you meant it,
and receive him as though nothing had happened, and as you did when he
used to come here.”

“I am sure I will,” said Bertie; and so they all said, and did
accordingly; but the grandfather excelled them all, for, as soon as they
had shaken hands with George and talked a little, the former said,
“James, I’ve been showing George your cart, and have told him about your
chest. Why won’t you take him upstairs and let him see it?”

They went upstairs together.

“I think we had better sit down to the table,” said Mr. Whitman; “they
will feel better to find us eating than they will to find us all sitting
here still, and have to look us in the face when they come down.”

Before James and George came down, the boys and their father had eaten
their supper and gone out, leaving James and George to eat together.

There were traces of tears on the cheeks of the latter, but he looked
happy and as though a great load was lifted from his heart, and felt so
much relieved that the boys persuaded him to pass the night with them.
In the course of the evening he told Bertie that David Riggs and William
Morse, who had also stopped at the meeting on the Sabbath succeeding the
one upon which he stopped, felt as he did, and wanted to do likewise,
but did not know how to bring it about. The four friends talked the
matter over, and it was resolved to invite David and William to the
log-rolling and the supper afterwards, and George was commissioned to
invite and come with them.

The day was set, the neighbors responded to the summons, the logs were
piled and burnt, and great numbers of the smaller stumps torn out by
main force and flung on the piles. David, William and George were among
the first on the ground, David bringing four oxen and George and William
a yoke each. Before they parted harmony was restored between them and
James and Peter and Bertie.

The boys were very solicitous that their grandfather should go out and
look at the burn but he was not able. The good old man had been failing
since the approach of hot weather and could only work a little while in
the garden in the morning; and at evening and during the greater part of
the time dozed in his chair. In the midst of wheat harvest there came a
week of extremely sultry weather which affected him very sensibly, and
as Mrs. Whitman was passing through the room where the old gentleman sat
asleep in his chair, she was alarmed by the extreme paleness of his
features, went to the chair and found him unconscious. She summoned her
husband and children, who were near by reaping, but when they reached
the house he was no more. A well-spent life had ceased without a
struggle. His death, though not unexpected, threw a gloom over that
happy family that not even the assurance of his preparedness could
dissipate, and that yielded only to the soothing hand of time.

James, to whom he had stood in the place of a parent, was so affected
that for several weeks he could speak of nothing else. Mr. Whitman now
conducted family prayers as his father had done, and in a few weeks
himself and wife, James and the children, united with the church. As the
result of the singing school there was formed a new choir, which Peter,
Bertie, and James joined, also Emily Conly, Jane Gifford, Sarah Evans,
Maria Whitman, and Prudence Orcutt.

When the boys came to harvest their corn they found an opportunity to
sell it in the ear to an agent who was buying corn and shelling it at
the mill with a machine that was moved by water-power, and shared
forty-nine dollars and fifty cents each. James also obtained eighteen
dollars and some cents for that raised on the same piece that he had
before planted with potatoes.

The season throughout had been dry and held so, the boys therefore took
the oxen, pulled out all the roots the oxen could start by means of
their help, and with the axe cut down all the stubs that had been broken
off and left. There were also a great many logs that were too green to
burn and had been piled up around the stumps; these they hauled together
and then setting fire to the corn stubble made a clean burn of weeds,
sprouts and logs, feeding the fire till the whole was consumed and a
good seed bed made for another year.

Edward Conly kept the school in the winter and everything passed off
pleasantly. James was now, as one of the choir, brought to the choir
meetings, mingled with the girls as he had never done before, and was
even induced by Bertie and Edward Conly to speak a piece and take part
in a dialogue at a school exhibition.

The boys resolved this spring (as they had cleared their burn so
thoroughly) to plough it a few inches deep and sow it with rye. It was
hard work for the cattle, and as they stopped to breathe them, Bertie
cried out, in his abrupt fashion,—

“Look here, James; by the time this grain comes off, or not long after,
your time will be out, your four years.”

After reflecting a moment, James replied,—

“So they will. Can it be that four years are gone already?”

“What are you going to do about the next crop after this? Father
promised us three crops; I don’t suppose he thought anything about the
time.”

“I’ll give it to you and Peter.”

“We’ll buy it of you,” said Peter.

“You are not going away,” said Bertie. “What is the use to talk about
that. This is your home just as much as it is ours; we won’t let you go,
will we, Pete?”

“Of course we won’t.”

“Father,” said Bertie, at dinner, “do you know that James’ time is out
next fall?”

“Yes.”

“But you said he and we might have three crops off that burn. If he goes
away he’ll lose his crop.”

“He won’t go away. I’ll hire him and let him have his crop to boot. I
suppose he’ll work for me, won’t you, James?”

“Work for you, Mr. Whitman. I’ll gladly work for you a year without
wages, and then I shall be altogether in your debt, for coming here has
been my salvation, both for soul and body.”

“You are worth more to me than any man I can hire, and I shall hire you,
and pay you all you are worth. Whatever I have done for you I have
received back, and more, too, in relief from the care and anxiety of
looking up help at critical periods, and in having the best of help, and
also in feeling that I had a man in whom I could place confidence, whom
the children could love, and who would not teach them any bad habits.
More especially do I think of how much father loved you, and only a few
days before his death he said to me,—

“‘Jonathan, James’ time will be out next year; don’t lose sight of him
when I am gone, and be kind to him for my sake.”

So far was Mr. Whitman from forgetting when James’ time was out, that
early in the spring he had written to his brother William, telling him
about James, and how much they were all attached to him; that under the
instruction of his father he had become a good shot with a rifle, had
learned a little of trapping, and to travel on snow-shoes. He then asked
him to take him with him a winter trapping, as he was anxious to earn
money to buy land.

He received a letter from his brother saying that he would willingly
take James, more especially as a Seneca Indian, with whom he had trapped
two winters, was dead. That he need bring no traps, except, perhaps, a
few small ones, nor lead, nor powder, as these articles could be
procured at Pittsburg, nor blankets, for they had enough; and to come on
horseback, as he had plenty of hay and grain, for which there was no
market, and that he would meet him at Pittsburg the last week in October
or the first in November.

Mr. Whitman put the letter in his pocket, and said nothing about it at
the time.

When the rye came off they shared twenty dollars each, after returning
two bushels to Mr. Whitman.

It was now the twenty-seventh of September, the corn and grain were
harvested, and the potatoes nearly dug. It was in the evening, cool
enough to render a fire comfortable, and the boys were seated around the
hearth, mute, and evidently expectant.

Mr. Whitman went into his bedroom, and returning with a letter in his
hand, said,—

“James, you have honorably fulfilled the agreement made with me four
years ago, and are now your own man, and to-morrow we will pass
receipts. Of course you now want to earn all you can. I know that the
desire to own a piece of land and call it your own is eating you up.
Bertie says you talk about it in your sleep, and I want to put you in
the way of getting it.”

He then told James of the letter he had received from his brother, and
put it in his hand. When James had read the letter, he said,—

“There is nothing I so much desire as to own a piece of land. Working
out by the month on a farm is a very slow way of getting money to buy it
with, as in the winter a man can earn but little more than his board,
and the winters are long here; in England the plough goes every month in
the year. I should like very much to go.”

“Trapping is a poor business to follow, but a very good resort for a
young man who wants to obtain something to give him a start. You can go
out there, trap till April, and if you are commonly successful can earn
more than you could in a whole farming season, and get back in time for
farm work, when I will hire you for the rest of the season, and you and
the boys can raise another crop on your burnt land.”

There was no time to be lost, as the journey was long, and James began
instantly to make his preparations.

“Father,” said Bertie, “the colt is too young for such a journey with a
heavy load, it will spoil him. Why don’t you let James take old Frank?
He’ll be back by the time we want to plough, and Frank is good for
anything.”

“I will, if you and Peter think you can part with Frank.” Mr. Whitman
gave his father’s rifle to James, a most excellent piece. He took with
him a few otter and beaver traps, pork, bread, and also a camp kettle,
as he calculated to kill game, and camp where taverns were not
convenient.

“Where are James and Bertie?” said Mr. Whitman, the night before James
was to set out.

“They have gone over to Mr. Conly’s,” said Peter.

“James has been over there two evenings this week. I should think if he
is going in the morning he would want to be at home this evening.”

“He thinks a great deal of Edward Conly, and I believe Walter is
expected home to-night.”

“I guess,” said Maria, “that it’s not Edward nor Walter, but Emily whom
he thinks the most of, for he went home from meeting with her last
Sunday night, and he never went home with anybody before. I don’t
believe but what Bert knows.”

“If he does he won’t blab it all round,” said Peter.

James took with him flint, steel and tinder, fish-hooks and lines, and
one blanket, and provender for Frank.

He started off with the good wishes of all the household. Bertie put his
arms round old Frank’s neck and told him to remember that he had a
character to sustain, and not to stumble on the mountains. The old
roadster bent down his head, rubbed his nose on the shoulder of his
young friend and seemed to signify, I will.

Uncle Nathan Kendrick, an old trapper, not far from the age of the
deceased grandfather, had given James a rough draft of the roads, with
the names of the streams, fords, and towns, the localities of the public
houses and log taverns, and the distances, and the places where grass
and water were to be found, and that were good camping grounds.

In the meanwhile the object of all this solicitude rode on, crossed the
Susquehannah at Harris Ferry, and found a good tavern, where he put up.
The next morning he started on, fed his horse on grass and provender,
buying provender at the farm-houses for the horse and what little he
required for himself, as he shot or trapped most of his provision. At
night he camped early, and after he left the older settlements behind,
he built a brush camp every night and put Frank into it to protect him
from the wolves, building his fire in front.

He found no difficulty in regard to living. When he stopped to bait at
noon on the banks of the Yellow Breeches Creek, he shot a wild turkey,
and had a sumptuous dinner. At Falling Spring he caught muskrats and
snared a partridge, and caught fish in the Conococheague Creek; on the
top of the North Mountain he found a log tavern, where he obtained
provender and camped; from thence, crossing the Alleghanies, he came to
Laurel Hill and Chestnut Ridge. This ridge was covered with a heavy
growth of chestnut trees, mixed with oaks, which rendered it a resort
for wild turkeys, coons and deer, and in the openings was an abundance
of sweet grass for the horse. Here he camped two days to rest the horse
after the fatigue of climbing the mountains, and while there he shot a
deer and trapped two minks.

James now found himself within about two miles of Pittsburg village,
then an assemblage of log houses, having some trade in furs and by
flat-boats down the river with New Orleans, Ohio and Kentucky; also some
trade by pack-horses with Baltimore and by water carriage by way of the
Kiskiminetas Creek and by portage.

Frank had not been in a stable since leaving Harristown. It was near
sundown, the wood was too thick for grass to grow, and James resolved to
put up at some farm-house and give him a good baiting of hay.

Seeing a log house, the logs of which were hewn on the sides and chinked
with lime mortar, a large barn and good breadth of land cleared, he made
application and received a cordial welcome from the farmer, a Scotchman.
His family consisted of a wife and three children, with all the
necessaries of life in abundance. When the evening meal was over, he
called the family together for prayers, and, according to the Scotch
custom, read a hymn, and finding that James sang, they all, even to the
children, united in praising God.

James had now the opportunity to clean his horse thoroughly from dust
and sweat, and feed him bountifully. Aside from his attachment to a good
horse, he knew that Mr. Whitman would never have let anybody else have
him, and was therefore very anxious to bring him through in good shape,
and nothing could exceed the pains he had taken with him on the road,
the result being that he was in excellent flesh and spirits, and showed
no signs of a hard journey.

James was much disappointed next morning, when he rode into Pittsburg,
at the mean appearance of the village, having heard so much of the
conflicts around Duquesne. He found most of the houses built of logs,
some of round logs, others two-story and the logs hewn, one brick house
and a few stone, some good frame houses, and a church built of hewn
timber, but plenty of public-houses.

                             CHAPTER XVIII.
                            WILLIAM WHITMAN.

James was proceeding leisurely along the street bordering on the river,
called Front Street, when, as he approached a log tavern where a great
number of teams were standing, his horse was suddenly caught by the
bridle, and upon looking up, he was confronted by one of the
finest-looking men he thought he had ever met, and who, extending his
hand, exclaimed,—

“Is this James Renfew?”

James replied in the affirmative, as he clasped the offered hand of the
stranger, and returned his hearty grasp.

“I am William Whitman, and I knew old Frank the instant I set eyes on
him. How are you, old playmate?” patting Frank’s neck. “He’s just my
age; twenty-five years old last April, the tenth. Frank and I are one
year’s children. How smooth he looks; young as a colt. You’ll have a
good time here, old fellow, this winter, plenty to eat and nothing to
do.”

“Ah! there’s father’s old rifle,” laying his hand on the weapon, that
lay across the forward part of the saddle. “Oh! what a good father he
was to us, and brought us all up in the right way. I know in reason he
is better off, and that we must all die, but the old rifle brings
everything back,—all the old days when he used to teach me to shoot
under the old chestnut. Father did not know how old that tree was. How
long have you lived with my brother?”

“Four years.”

“And you have lived right among them all that time, and was there when
my father died?”

“Yes, sir; your father taught me to work with tools, and to shoot, and
trap, and could not rest till he brought me and Peter, Bertie and Maria,
to pray to God, and then he died.”

“You don’t know how glad I am to see you, and how glad Mary will be to
see somebody right from home. I suppose you knew my wife was Bradford
Conly’s daughter?”

“Yes, sir; I went to school to Walter two winters; and Edward Conly was
the last person except your brother’s folks that I shook hands with.”

William Whitman went for his horse, and they set forth; the road, very
good for a few miles, soon became a mere bridle path between spotted
trees. Clearings were sparse, and consisted of a few acres, the houses
were built of round logs, the roofs covered with splints hollowed like a
gouge, two laid hollow side up, and a rider rounded so that the edges of
it turned into the hollows of the under ones, was placed on top, like
the tiles of a West Indian house.

“I am taking you to a rough place by a rough road, but we shall be
comfortable and find something to keep soul and body together when we
get there.”

They now came in sight of the Monongahela and to some high bottom land
of about six acres, smooth, bare of trees and covered with a thick sward
of grass, in which was a young orchard, and in the midst of the orchard
stood a house built of logs, the tops and bottom hewn, and the chimney
of brick laid in lime mortar, and the bottom logs of the house were
underpinned with stone and the stones pointed with lime mortar. The
windows were small but glazed and fitted with bullet-proof shutters, and
the roof covered with pine shingles nailed. There was also a good frame
barn and a corn crib of round logs. Besides this natural meadow, about
ten acres had been cleared of forest, part of which had that season been
planted with corn and sown with wheat, and about three acres were
already green with winter rye, the remainder was in grass. The house
stood at a slight elbow in the stream, and thus commanded a view of the
river in both directions. Mr. Whitman told James it was about three
miles to where the river Youghiogheny came in.

“We are a rough-handed people here, Mr. Renfew, have forgotten what
little breeding we ever had, but we can give you a hearty welcome,” said
William as they dismounted, and fastening the horses, he led the way to
the house.

“Mary,” he said to his wife who met them at the door with a babe in her
arms, “this is Jonathan’s boy, James Renfew. I reckon he must think
about as much of him as he does of Peter or Bertie. If he didn’t, he
never would have let him have Frank to come out into this wilderness.”

“Now, Mr. Renfew, just sit you down and talk with the woman while I see
to the horses.”

James told Mrs. Whitman how lately he had parted with her parents and
brothers, and as Mr. Whitman just then came in, everything in relation
to the old gentleman that he thought would be interesting to them.

Suddenly Mrs. Whitman exclaimed,—

“Husband, what are we thinking about? Mr. Renfew has not had anything to
eat and now it is past noon.” Her husband took the child, and she soon
had biscuit in the Dutch oven and slices of venison, killed the day
before, broiling.

“Take a seat in my wife’s rocking chair, Mr. Renfew,” pointing to a
singularly constructed affair in the corner; “you see it took three to
make that chair. The Lord found the stuff; I did a little cabinet work,
and Mary the ornamental part.”

It was made by fitting a board into two-thirds of a hollow cedar log for
a seat, and notching into it for the arms, and slanting the back, to the
bottom, were fitted rockers. The wife had made a cushion, covered and
stuffed the arms and back, and thus made a most comfortable chair.

The cradle was more remarkable still, being made of an entire hollow
sycamore log; this log, after being cut off the right length, was sawed
down two feet from the ends, the piece taken out leaving the rest for
the top; the ends were filled with basswood bark, pressed flat and
fastened with glue, made by boiling the tips of deer’s horns; and
rockers were put on.

It was large enough for three babies, as a large log was taken in order
to get height sufficient for the top, but the space was filled with a
bed and stuffing. Two pewter platters, four earthen mugs, wooden plates,
spoons and bowls, all of wood, made the table furniture, and bedsteads
were made of rough poles.

On the other hand there was a handsome loom with reeds and harness, all
in excellent order, large and little wheels and reels and cards, and
good feather beds and bedding.

“I see you are looking at my wife’s cradle,” said William, “it was made
for the occasion, but the child is comfortable, and may be President of
the United States yet.”

“Did you make that loom? It is very handsome.”

“Yes, I thought as it was a thing we should always need, I would take
time and make it well. I could have made a cradle of boards, but we
needed the boards for a roof, and nails are a scarce article here. The
fact is we brought the things we most needed, and I brought my tools,
because I knew I could with them hatch up something to get along with,
and when I got time make something better. Now, Mr. Renfew,—”

“Call me James, if you please, I shall feel more at home.”

“Now, James, if you’ll take care of the beasts, I’ll take my rifle and
see if I can get a wild turkey, or pigeon, and then we’ll have another
chat; for to-morrow we must get ready for the woods.”

“You may think it silly, James, but I’ll go out with you, for I want to
see and pet old Frank; nothing brings home so near as seeing him,” said
Mary.

“That’s because I always rode him over to her father’s when I was
courting her, and she used to ride on his back, on the pillion behind
me, to singing school, huskings and all sorts of doings.”

Away he went, humming a merry tune. While Mrs. Whitman was talking to
Frank, patting him, pulling locks of sweet hay out of the mow and giving
to him, James looked after the retreating form of her husband, who was
making the woods ring with his music, and said within himself,—

“What a man!—far from neighbors, with three little children,
bullet-proof window shutters, five rifles and a shot-gun hanging over
the fireplace, and gay as a lark. He’s just like Bertie for all the
world; it’s just as Mrs. Whitman said, ‘If you like Bertie you’ll like
his uncle, for they are just alike.’”

At dusk Mr. Whitman returned with a turkey and three pigeons, and after
the evening meal was partaken of and the children in bed, James asked
him how he came to think of settling where he was when there was plenty
of wild land east of the mountains, and especially as the homes both of
himself and wife were there.

“I came up here when I was seventeen years old with uncle Nathan
Hendrick trapping, we trapped on this stream and on the Youghiogheny;
there were beaver here then,—a few,—a good many otters and foxes, and no
end to the coons; we did well and that gave me a taste for trapping.

“When I was eighteen, father gave me my time, a good rifle, and money to
buy a good set of traps. I worked two summers on farms, and in the
winters came up here and trapped alone. Then I had fallen head over ears
in love with that girl who is jogging the cradle, and she wanted to get
married and settle down awful”—upon this he received a sound box on the
ear from his wife. “You see we wanted to get together, I had taken a
great liking to this place, couldn’t get it out of my head, used to
dream about it. I hadn’t much money but wanted considerable land,
couldn’t bear to be crowded; and this land was dog cheap. About this
time I got acquainted with a half-breed Indian, who told me there was
good trapping and hunting on the Big Beaver. I went and looked over this
land, made up my mind just exactly as to what I could do with it, saw
that I could get along faster here than anywhere else, because I could
do two things as you may say at once.”

“What two things?”

“I could trap and farm. I made up my mind at once and bought two hundred
acres, though it took all the money I had. I went to a blacksmith in
Pittsburg who I knew often saw the half-breed, and got him to ask him to
trap with me the next winter, and for the smith to write me, and went
home. When I got home, father had given the farm to Jonathan to take
care of him and mother. I hired with Jonathan at twenty-five dollars a
month. I worked till August and had a hundred dollars.”

“Why didn’t you work through the season?”

“Because I had received a letter from the smith saying that the
half-breed would trap with me, and I knew I could trust that Indian.

“I gave forty-five dollars of my money to that woman for safe keeping
(it was an awful risk, but I did it). I borrowed a mule and a
pack-saddle of Mr. Nevins and put on him seventy-five steel traps,
powder, lead and blankets, a few tools to make dead-falls (wooden traps)
and other fixings, took old Frank, put a saddle and pillion on him and
some light things, tied the mule’s bridle to Frank’s tail, put Bertie on
the pillion, and started. The Indian had agreed to meet me at Turkey
Foot.”

“What is Turkey Foot?”

“Don’t you remember that just after you left Somerset you crossed a
creek with high banks?”

“Yes.”

“Not far from that the Yo. (Youghiogheny) splits into three forks. That
is the middle one, and the place where they divide is called Turkey
Foot, because it looks so much like one.

“You know what that boy is; keen as a brier and smart as steel. Wasn’t
he tickled when he found he was going and where he was going; he hugged
me, kissed me, and hardly knew which end he stood on.”

“That explains something that has puzzled me. When I got near the
crossing I found an Indian path, and Frank was so determined to follow
it that I had to strike him several times before he would give it up. I
could not imagine what it meant, for I thought I knew he had never been
there before.”

“When we reached Turkey Foot the Indian had been there a week, and had
laid in a lot of provisions; he had the carcass of a deer hung up and
had smoked and dried the best parts of several more, and had killed and
dried a lot of wild pigeons.”

“What did Bertie say to the Indian?”

“Made friends with him right off; stuck to him like his shadow, Bert’s
tongue running like a mill-clapper and the Indian grunting once in a
while, but the half-breed made him a bow and arrows and a little birch,
and he went back with the two horses, about the biggest-feeling boy ever
you saw.

“We paddled down the Yo. into this stream, and down this to Pittsburg,
got some more traps there, went down the Allegheny twenty-five miles to
Big Beaver, and up that about fifteen miles; went to trapping and
trapped till the middle of April. The Indian wanted to carry his furs to
Canada, so we made another canoe and came to Pittsburg, where I stored
my furs.”

“Then I suppose you took the canoe, came to Turkey Foot, and from there
home?”

“By no means. I wrote a letter, told ‘em what I had done; that I was
well; hoped they were the same; must excuse all mistakes; came here, and
went to felling trees, till the fifteenth of May; then I went eight
miles to the nearest neighbor, and got him to come with his team, and
plough up an acre of the clear land; planted it with potatoes and corn,
and sowed a little flax. I then cut all the grass that grew on the
bottom land, and in openings in the woods, made a hand-sled, hauled it
to the stack and stacked it. Then I went right into a thick place in the
woods and built a log camp; it was only fourteen feet by twelve, and
just high enough to get into, with a splint roof, a stone fireplace, no
chimney, only a hole through the roof, and no floor, but brush laid on
the ground. It had but one window, and that was made in the door; was
filled with oiled paper, and had a slide for stormy weather. Then, after
making a house for cattle, I went to chopping till the last of August,
and then went to hunting and trapping again.”

“Did you go back to the Beaver?”

“No, indeed; had hunting and trapping enough on the spot. I had built no
fence because I had no cattle, and the bears, deers, and coons were
determined to have my corn. Sometimes when I turned out in the morning,
I would find a moose or a deer feeding on my grass, or browsing among
the trees I had cut last. In a brook about a mile off there were a few
otters, and many minks and foxes. I bought a lot of hens and geese, on
purpose to tole the foxes, and went to trapping and shooting in good
earnest. I made a log-trap for bears and wolves, and once in a while
shot a moose or deer, and trapped otters and foxes. I had so much meat
lying round that it toled the foxes and wolves; the wolves soon drove
off the deer and moose, and then I shot the wolves on bait. Every wolf I
killed I got ten shillings bounty and his skin was worth two dollars;
and a bear’s skin from sixteen to twenty. That’s what I meant when I
said that here I could do two things at the same time. I had built a
house, raised corn, potatoes, flax, and hay enough to carry me through
the winter, felled five acres of trees, and earned by trapping and
shooting more than I had all the summer before, working for my brother,
and been at work for myself most of the time. As for the deer, bears,
and wolves, I didn’t go after them, and it did not take much time to set
the traps, and what was of no less consequence I had got a first-rate
birch. There’s nothing like a birch to a wild Indian, or a new settler.”

“Is a birch then so valuable?”

“Next to the Bible and the narrow axe.”

“I don’t suppose you meant to go on to your place till spring?”

“Didn’t. I pulled my flax and spread it to rot, put my pack, rifle and
provisions into the birch and started up-stream. I didn’t go to the
Forks where I met the half-breed, but into Sewickly Creek, and paddled
up it to within a rod of the road, hid the birch in the woods, took my
pack and started for home.”

“That was a long hard journey.”

“It was all that. I told this little woman what I had done, made it as
bad as I knew how; told her just what a miserable place she would have
to live in, and gave her the choice to go back with me or I would go
back alone, trap all winter and come for her in the spring, and before
another winter build a more comfortable house; and all her folks and
most of mine thought that was the best way.

“But she wouldn’t hear a word of it, said if I could stand it, she
could; wasn’t a bit afraid, that it was the best time of the year to go
because the roads were better and the streams we would have to ford were
low; and that I ought to be on my land early in the spring to sow or
plant the ground I had ploughed. So we got married, and then the old
folks set in worse than ever for us not to go till spring, and even the
neighbors took it up, but I had one on my side and he was worth all the
rest.”

“Who was that?”

“Father,” said William, sinking his voice to a whisper.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Whitman, “his opinion was worth more than all the
other’s opinions. A few nights before we set out, and when all the young
girls, my schoolmates, were pitying me and doing all they could to make
me feel worse, the good old man took me into the other room and said:
‘Mary, never you mind those young people, don’t let anything they say
jar you a particle. Listen to the old man who has been over every inch
of the road you and William are starting on. If you live to my age
you’ll look back and say that the days you spent in the brush camp were
the happiest days, for they were full of hope; but when you have lived
to my age you will have outlived all your hopes but the hope of eternal
life, and that is the best of all, because the possession will be more
than the expectation while everything else falls short. You have got a
good husband, his heart is tender as a child’s, but his mind is as firm
as a piece of the nether millstone. He’s a cheery lad, he’ll look on the
bright side, keep your heart up and his own too. You are married now and
have taken the first step, don’t look back, it didn’t work well with
Lot’s wife. I never knew it to work well with anybody, look ahead; a man
isn’t half a man and a woman isn’t half a woman who has never had any
load to carry. I take it you’ll work in an even yoke; you are both
smart, and no doubt feel that you are equal to anything, and perhaps
look down on people who have not your strength and resolution, but it is
better to look up, and the first night you get into the camp I want
William to take the Bible and read and pray, and I want you to ask him
to.’ I didn’t have to ask him.”

“Didn’t you wish you had taken your parents’ advice before you got over
the mountains, and before you got through that first winter?”

“By no means. We had no table only some pieces of bark set on four
stakes, driven into the ground; no bedstead, but put the beds on the
brush; we had no room for furniture, because I must have room for my
wool and flax wheels, to spin the flax William had raised and the wool I
had brought from home.”

“Were you comfortable?”

“I never saw so warm a place as that camp. William covered it all over
with brush outside, and the snow drifted over it; we had plenty of bear
and wolf skins, and if it had not been for the hole in the roof we
should have roasted.”

“How did you get the wagon here,—there was no road?”

“William got a teamster who was going to Pittsburg with four horses and
a light load to take the canoe, and it arrived in Pittsburg before we
did. We put our things, part of ‘em, in that, and we came in; the next
day he got the rest and left the wagon till winter, and then made a sled
and hauled it up the river on the ice. The river makes an excellent road
in winter for a sled and in summer for the canoe.”

“Yes; and Providence keeps it in repair, and no road tax to work out,”
said her husband.

James could not have been placed in a better school to learn how to cut
his way through life than with this cheerful, resolute pair in the
wilderness.

The next morning they took the birch canoe from the barn; Whitman gummed
the seams, and they carried it to the water. Whitman held it, told James
to get in, sit down in the middle and keep still; he then got in
himself, and standing up, with one stroke of the paddle, sent the light
craft flying into the middle of the stream. James was delighted with the
movement of the buoyant craft.

William then told him to kneel down and take the paddle while he kept
the balance, and to paddle without fear, for he would keep her on her
bottom.

“James, you have got to learn to use this birch. Can you swim?”

“Like a fish.”

“Well then, take off part of your clothes and try it; for most likely
you’ll upset.”

James crossed the stream, came back and attempted to go up stream; he
went up a little way, but in turning to come back, the birch went out
from under him, then righted, and was three times her length from him in
a moment.

“You can’t get into her, give her a shove to me.” James gave the canoe a
little push with one hand, and the light craft spun over the water to
William, who held her while James swam ashore.

“What queer things they are! I was in the water before I could wink.”

“Ay, they’ll tip you out, and right themselves without a drop of water
in ‘em, and then sit and laugh at you. We must now make up our minds how
many traps we can tend. How many traps did you bring?”

“Only twenty-five small ones.”

“I think we ought to tend three hundred. I am going to trap on the same
ground that the Indian and I trapped on last year. My traps are there
hid under rocks. I shall get a few more. If you’ll take care of the
cattle and practise in this birch, I’ll go to Pittsburg and get the
traps, and leave ‘em there to take when we go along, and to-morrow we’ll
start.”

James, in the course of the day, got used to the birch, and met with no
farther mishap.

Whitman got home at dusk, and called him to supper, when he found a
young woman of twenty and a stout boy of eighteen by the name of
Montgomery. They could neither of them read or write, and were to stay
with Mrs. Whitman during the absence of her husband, and she was to
teach them to read and write. Jane Montgomery was also to weave a web of
cloth for her mother, as they were recent settlers and had as yet no
loom. The next day was spent in preparations for departure and in
putting all their things into the birch,—cooking utensils, blankets,
provisions and other matters, tools to make dead falls, and repair
camps, and snow shoes.

                              CHAPTER XIX.
                               TRAPPING.

They proceeded down the Monongahela to the Alleghany; down the Alleghany
to the mouth of the Big Beaver, and up that about thirty miles till they
came to a fork. Taking the easterly fork, they proceeded about three
miles till they reached another fork. Here they found a temporary camp,
which they repaired and passed the night in, collected the traps Whitman
had concealed the year before, and set them as they went up the stream,
till in the course of five miles they came to another temporary camp in
very good repair. They went on five miles more, and found another camp
that needed slight repairs. Having repaired this, they went on five
miles more, and found a camp with a bark roof, stone chimney and
fireplace. The roof and chimney needed some repairing. They passed the
night here and found more traps, which they set, and replaced some that
were worn out with new ones. They now returned, and as they went found
in the traps two beavers, four minks and one otter. This put them in
good spirits. They paddled rapidly down to the Fork, and ascended the
other streams and began to set the new traps, as this was the ground the
half-breed had trapped. In the course of five miles they came to a
temporary camp and repaired it, setting traps as they went. Here they
found stretchers for skins. At the distance of five miles they came to a
permanent log camp with a stone fireplace, chimney, and a lug pole in
the chimney to hang a kettle on. There was a window with oiled paper in
it, bark shelves, backwoods stools, and a table made of cedar-splints.
There were also bark dishes and wooden spoons and plates. This was the
main or home camp. Here they unloaded the birch and deposited all their
provisions. They made a hemlock broom, cleaned out the camp, collected
small hemlock and cedar brush for beds, heated water and washed and
scalded every thing that had need of washing; and cooked the tail of a
beaver and roasted a fish they caught in the stream for supper.

The next morning they proceeded up stream five miles, setting traps
until they reached another temporary camp, which needed much repairing,
and did not reach the home camp till dark. After supper they sat some
time chatting and arranging their plans for the winter.

“I can’t help thinking of the Indian; there in the corner are his arrows
and bow. If I could use them as well as he, we should get more deer meat
this winter,” said William.

“A rifle is better than a bow.”

“True, but we cannot fire a rifle till the stream is frozen. The beaver
is a very timid creature, and while they are running about the bank the
less noise we make the better, but the bow is a silent weapon, and in an
Indian’s hand effective.”

Such was the divergency of the creeks that when each was at the upper
end of his line of traps they were ten miles apart, but every other
night they met at the home camp where they did most of their cooking;
the other camps were for shelter and to skin their game in and stretch
and keep the skins.

Every Sunday they met at the home camp, and indulged in a pot of pork
and beans, and sassafras tea and Johnny-cake, baked on a flat stone,
with a slice of pork. When they had made their plans and partaken of the
supper William threw himself upon the brush, wrapped the blanket around
him, and was asleep in a moment.

But in respect to James the situation was too novel to permit of sleep.
He went out and seated himself upon the birch, that was turned upon the
bank. It was a night of stars but moonless. He was nearly three hundred
miles from home, sixty from any village, and half that from any
habitation; no baying of dogs, rumbling of wheels, nor any of the sounds
of civilized life fell upon his ear as he reflected and listened to the
moaning of the stream as it swept past, and the sounds new and
inexplicable to him that came up on the night wind from the forest. A
strange feeling of loneliness came over him. He felt his own nothingness
as never before; the mighty forest seemed closing around and about to
crush him; and commending himself to God he also wrapped himself in his
blanket, and lay watching the flickering firelight till sleep and
fatigue overpowered him.

Here they remained and trapped till the middle of April, and then made
up their furs. Mr. Whitman took them to Philadelphia. They divided five
hundred dollars between them, and James reached home the sixth of May.

The Whitmans were seated at the dinner-table. During the forenoon they
had been preparing the ground to plant corn, they had been working four
horses, putting James’ colt in with Dick, in the absence of his mate.

“Father,” said Peter, “hadn’t we better plough that piece of burnt land,
and not wait for James?”

Mr. Whitman was about to reply, but his voice was drowned in a loud
neigh that penetrated every cranny of the dwelling, and took precedence
of all other sounds, and was instantly followed by a most vigorous
response from the four horses in the barn, in which the tones of Dick
were the most prominent.

“It’s Frank’s voice, Frank and James!” shouted Bertie, running to the
door, followed more leisurely by all the rest.

Great was the joy and fervent the greetings, and not less warm the
welcome bestowed upon old Frank, who, after a whole winter’s rest, had
renewed his age.

“Take him to the stable, Bertie,” said his father, “or Dick will tear
the stall down, he wants to see his mate.”

James was soon seated at the table, when Mr. Whitman said,—

“Do you like that part of the state better than this, James.”

“No, sir, it is too near the Indians.”

“But hasn’t General Wayne settled them?”

“Yes, sir, for a few years, perhaps; but there are a great many of them
in the country beyond the Ohio, and they will always be ready to take up
the hatchet, and certainly won’t lack provocation. Then there’s no
market but by flat boats two thousand miles down the river to New
Orleans, or by pack-horses and wagons over the mountains. If you raise
crops you can’t sell ‘em; a good cow is worth but five dollars, a horse
ten; wheat thirty cents a bushel and won’t bear transporting over the
mountains,—nothing will but whiskey. Four bushels of grain is a load for
a horse over the mountains, but he will carry twenty-four made into
whiskey.”

“By-and-by it will be different.”

“They hope and expect it will, but it may be a long time. Why should
anybody go where he can get land for nothing, and that is good for
nothing to him after he has got it, as he can’t sell anything from it?
It is about as broad as it is long. I have no doubt there is land this
side of the mountains, and wild land too, about as cheap, and where
crops can be got to market.”

As no one of the family thought of questioning James as to his route,
naturally supposing that he came back by the same road over which he
went, he did not tell them that he turned off at the foot of the north
mountain, proceeded up along the west bank of the Susquehannah, crossed
it at Northumberland, and travelled for two days inspecting the country,
looking over the farms and clearings, inquiring the price of land
improved and wild, the price of cattle, grain, and opportunities for
market, and also in relation to the state of roads, and distances from
markets and the means of conveyance.

“Boys,” said Mr. Whitman, “you may take the harnesses off the horses,
we’ll have a half holiday to talk with James, and it would be too bad to
put old Frank into the team the first day he came home.”

It was a matter of necessity that James should (after conversing with
Mr. Whitman, and telling him all the news in regard to his brother’s
family) go directly to Mr. Conly’s, carry letters, and tell him and his
wife everything in relation to their daughter, her husband and the
grandchildren, interesting for them to know. It was, however, not
accomplished that afternoon or even in the evening, of which it consumed
a large portion, but required so many evenings that at length it began
to attract attention.

“James goes to the Conlys a great deal. Do you think he has any
particular reason?” said Mr. Whitman to his wife.

“I don’t know. Mr. Conly’s was the first place he ever went to; he and
Edward are great friends; always have been. The master, you know, worked
here all one summer and has always tried to help James from the start. I
think it would be strange if he didn’t go there a good deal, especially
as he goes nowhere else.”

“I know all that, but I am of the same mind still.”

“Bertie knows; I mean to ask him.”

Mrs. Whitman interrogated Bertie, but though generally so communicative,
he was all at once very reticent.

“Bertie, your father and myself are the best friends James has in the
world, and your father is able to help James if he is so minded. If
there is anything in this, you know and ought to tell us, for it will go
no farther.”

“Well, mother, if you must know, he’s dying for Emily, and she’s dying
for him.”

“Then why don’t he tell her so? There’s not a better girl in the
country, nor more capable.”

“Because he imagines a host of things. He thinks because she and her
folks know all about his coming out of a workhouse, and she knows what
he was when he first came here, and how he was picked upon and scouted
at school, they must kind of look down upon him; that though they might
pity him, treat him as a friend and try to help him along, it would be
another thing if he wanted to come into the family, and even if they
didn’t care they might think other people would, and throw it up at them
that she was going with a _redemptioner_.

“That’s all the merest nonsense, and his imagination. I go there with
him, and after a little while get up to go; then up he’ll jump and go
with me, though they ask and urge him to stop. He’ll go home from
meeting with her, and sometimes I go with them on purpose, and she’ll
ask us to go in, I’ll say I must go, and give him a punch in the ribs to
go in, but no, off he comes with me. I know by what Ed. says the old
folks would like it, and I tell him he can’t expect her to break the
ice, and would not want her to. I wish I could shut them up together,
I’d starve them to it as they do a jury.”

“If they like each other, and it suits all round,—I know it would suit
William and his wife; he wrote a long letter to your father, and sent it
by James, in which he said everything good about James that he could
say, and has made him promise to trap with him next winter,—and if there
is nothing in the way but James’ diffidence, it will take care of
itself. There never was a man yet who liked a woman and didn’t find some
way to let her know it.”

“Yes, mother, she may know; I expect she knows it now, but how shall she
know it enough?”

“There will be some way provided.”

James and the boys concluded to sow their land with wheat and grass
seed, as this was their last year, Mr. Whitman finding the grass seed.
Matters went on in their regular course till the beginning of wheat
harvest, when Mrs. Conly sent for Mrs. Whitman to come over there and
spend the afternoon, and for Mr. Whitman to come to tea.

“I have had a letter from Mary,” said Mrs. Conly, “and she is just crazy
for me to let Emily come on with James Renfew this fall, when he goes to
trap, and come back with him in the spring, she does so long to see some
of us: and she can’t come on account of the baby, and it’s such a good
chance. I thought I never could let Emily go over the mountains. I don’t
see how I can; and I want to talk it over with you.”

After weighing the matter all round, these sage counsellors concluded
that Mary Whitman ought in reason to be gratified; she was away there in
the woods; and it was natural that she should want to see her sister, or
some of her folks; and she was so lonely when William was away trapping.
There could be no danger from Indians, since General Wayne had chastised
them so severely.

“I have not said a word to Emily yet. It may be that she will be afraid
to venture so far, for she never was from home a night in all her life.”

“I think she’ll go,” said Mrs. Whitman; “she thinks so much of her
sister, and these young folks are venturesome.”

When the matter was broached to Emily, “though she was at first,” as her
mother said, “struck all up in a heap,” yet she consented, _on her
sister’s account_, to venture.

When Mrs. Whitman, after going home, broached the matter to James, she
feared, as the good woman told her husband, he would faint away; for he
turned as many colors as a gobbler-turkey when a red cloth is held
before him.

As for Bertie he was in raptures.

“Could anything be more nice, mother? How happened it to come just now?”

“Nothing could be more natural, Bertie; Mary Whitman has been teasing
her mother ever since she was married, to let Emily come out there, and
when she found James was coming again to trap, she was just furious, and
there was no doing anything with her.

“You must go over there with James to-night, for Mrs. Conly will want to
know about it and encourage him, for I am afraid he will appear so
diffident that Mrs. Conly, and perhaps Emily too, will think he don’t
want her to go with him, though I know better than that.”

“If he does, mother, I’ll pull every spear of hair out of his head. Oh,
I wish it was me instead of him, I’d make my best bow, so, mother
(suiting the action to the word), and I’d say that nothing would give me
greater pleasure than to enjoy the company of Miss Conly, and that I
considered it a privilege to be the instrument of cheering Mrs. Whitman
in her loneliness.”

“Ay, you are very brave, but if it was your own case, you might,
perhaps, be as bad as James.”

“I don’t believe that, mother, but I mean to come home early and leave
James there if I can.”

Bertie, however, came home before eight o’clock and with him James, who
went directly to his bedroom. The moment the door closed after James,
Bertie exclaimed,—

“It’s all fixed, mother.”

“What’s fixed?”

“About her going with him. I told him what to say; he didn’t say half
what I told him, nor the way I told him, but it came to about the same
thing.”

“If he had he would have appeared ridiculous.”

“Why, mother?”

“Because your manner of expressing yourself would have appeared as much
out of the way from his lips as would your head on his shoulders.”

“I mean to tell him that the journey is his chance, and if he don’t
improve it he’ll never have another, and never ought to.”

“You had a great deal better tell him that Emily never would have
consented to go with him, and her parents would never have let her go,
if both she and they had not reposed the utmost confidence in him,
neither would Mary Whitman have made the request; and that will
encourage him to overcome his bashfulness.”

“Mother, how much better you can plan than I can.”

“She has had a good deal of experience in managing men,” said Mr.
Whitman, who had been a silent, but by no means indifferent listener.

“Husband, do you want me to box your ears?”

                              CHAPTER XX.
                            JAMES AND EMILY.

They set forward the first week in September. James had left everything
but his rifle and ammunition in the wilderness, and on his way home had
stopped every night at a tavern or farm-house. He therefore had nothing
to carry of any consequence, and put a pack-saddle on his colt, which
Mr. Whitman had broken in the course of the winter, and in the pockets
of the saddle put all Miss Conly’s clothes, flint and steel, provender,
pepper and salt, and mugs to drink out of, and knives and forks. Behind
the saddle of Miss Conly’s horse was strapped a round valise, in which
she carried her needles and some clothing and light articles. When the
weather was pleasant they put up only at night at the taverns, which
were generally poor; halting at noon by some stream or pleasant spot
that afforded grass for the horses. At such times James would often
shoot game and cook it on the coals, or catch a fish in the stream, and
they would lunch.

The diffidence of James gradually wore off as he became better
acquainted with his companion and found how implicitly she relied upon
him for care and protection, but that very fact, coupled with his high
sense of honor, prevented him from giving voice to the words that were
often upon his lips, because he felt that to do this when they were
alone in the wilderness was taking an undue advantage and placing her in
an embarrassing position,—and more terrible still, should he meet with a
refusal, how awkward and constrained would be their positions going back
together, as go they must in the spring.

He could not, however, endure the thought of going into the woods before
the matter was settled, and remaining in a state of suspense all winter.
They were now within a day’s journey of Pittsburg and James had not
effected the purpose nearest his heart. He now began to accuse himself
for having neglected on the road opportunities that would never occur
again, for at Pittsburg they would be in a crowded tavern; and at
William Whitman’s his stay would be brief, and there would occur no
opportunities so favorable as many he had suffered to pass by
unimproved.

The sun was setting as they neared the Scotch settler’s, where James had
before been made so welcome, and Pittsburg was but two miles away. Mr.
Cameron was seated bareheaded on the door-stone with his wife, watching
the children, who were frolicking with a calf they were rearing. Hearing
the tread of horses, he looked up and instantly coming forward, said,—

“Gude e’en, Maister Renfew, I am blythe to see you, and to find that you
like us weel eneuch to be ganging this way again.”

“I never enjoyed myself better than I did last winter, and I am glad to
find you and your family all in good health, for I see they are all
here. This is Miss Conly, a sister to Mrs. Whitman, and is going to
spend the winter with her.”

“I’m right glad to see baith you and the lassie, and now light ye down
and the gude wife’ll gie ye some supper in the turning of a glass, and
ye’ll spend the Sabbath wi’ us, and Monday morning ye can gang on
rejoicing,”

“You are very kind, Mr. Cameron, but it is early and we can get to
Pittsburg before it is very late.”

“I’ll niver consent to it. The horses are weary, so is the lassie; I ken
it by the glance of her een. Ye’ll surely not travel on the Lord’s day,
bating necessity, and the tavern at Pittsburg is no place for Christian
people on the Sabbath, for there will be brawling and fighting and
mayhap bloodshed between the flat-boat men.”

“Take the beasts by the bridles, Donald,” said his wife, “while I put on
the kettle. What ails ye that ye dinna do it? We hae room eneuch for ten
people, let alone twa, and what’s mair a hearty welcome.”

[Illustration: THE SCOTCH SETTLERS’ WELCOME. Page 284.]

James could not have arranged matters so well for himself. Inwardly
rejoicing, he assisted Miss Conly to alight, and they were ushered into
the best room of the hospitable abode. While the travellers washed and
rested a little from the fatigue of a long ride, Mrs. Cameron had
prepared a backwoods supper.

“We have had worship,” said Mr. Cameron, “before ye came, but an ye are
not too weary I wad like to sing a psalm or two; it’s seldom we hae any
one wi’ us can sing.”

After spending an hour so pleasantly as to make James and Emily forget
the fatigue of their journey, they retired for the night.

The evening had thus been fully occupied, and James, his courage screwed
by despair to the sticking point, had as yet found no opportunity for a
private interview.

When Sunday morning came, Emily told Mrs. Cameron if she would like to
attend meeting with her husband, she would take care of the children and
get the meals, to which the former replied that she would gladly go, as
she seldom could leave the children, and Mr. Cameron’s brother was to
have a child christened that Sabbath.

Thus were they left alone, with the exception of the children, who were
most of the time out of doors or in the barn. It seemed indeed a most
auspicious moment; but, although ever approximating like a moth flying
around a candle, James could not summon courage to declare himself in
broad daylight. Mr. Cameron and his wife most likely would be inclined
to sing till bedtime, and thus the opportunity that seemed at the outset
so favorable, would in all probability have resulted in disappointment
had not a fortunate circumstance prevented so untoward an occurrence.

Mr. Cameron was to deliver a load of wheat at Pittsburg by sunrise
Monday morning, and intended to rise at twelve o’clock in order to eat,
load his grain and reach the landing in season, as it was going into a
flat-boat.

Her husband, unsuspecting soul, thought it was the most natural thing in
life that Mrs. Whitman’s sister should come to visit her, and come with
this young man who was going right there; and was anxious even at the
expense of his rest to indulge in a psalm or two. But his shrewder
helpmeet divined that there was a feeling stronger than that of
friendship between her guests, and when supper and worship were
finished, ushered them into the best room, and begging them to excuse
herself and husband, as he was to start at one of the clock or soon
after, and she must rise at twelve to get his breakfast, left them
together.

James found that, like many other things in life, the anticipation was
worse than the reality, and though he could not the next morning have
told the words he had uttered in that little parlor, he was very sure
that Emily Conly had promised to be his wife, provided her parents were
willing, and that he was the happiest fellow that night that the stars
looked down upon.

They took no note of time till they heard Mrs. Cameron up stairs getting
up, and had barely opportunity to scud to their beds before she came
down stairs.

Mr. Cameron had seen William Whitman Sunday at meeting, and notified him
of their being at his house, and when they arrived at Pittsburg they
found William, his wife, with the baby, and Jane Montgomery. It was a
joyful meeting, for the two sisters were tenderly attached to each
other.

“James,” said William Whitman, “we’ll put everything into the birch and
get in ourselves and go home in fine style. Jane Montgomery will take
both the horses along.”

When they had proceeded about seven miles and become a little satiated
with conversation, William struck up a tune in which they all joined,
for it was one which William and the sisters with the rest of the family
were accustomed to sing sitting on the door-step at home. Before going
into the woods James wrote to Mr. Conly and obtained the consent of the
parents on condition that he should not carry her over the Alleghenies
to live, for they could not bear to have the mountains between them and
the remaining daughter.

They began trapping earlier this year; and abandoning the eastern branch
of the stream that had been trapped out, took the western branch and
went farther up, which necessitated the building of some new camps, but
they found more beaver, and being so much earlier upon the ground,
before the bears went into winter quarters, were enabled to kill
several; likewise found more otters, and James, having had the advantage
of a winter’s practice, was more successful, and in the spring they
divided six hundred and fifty dollars between them.

During the journey that James made on his way back the year before to
the Susquehannah, he had been very much pleased with the beauty and
fertility of the limestone soil in the valley of that stream.
Settlements had been made there as early as 1778, but latterly a new
county had been formed, a town had been laid out just above the mouth of
Lycoming Creek that emptied into the west branch of the Susquehannah
River, and a road had been laid out to a painted post, where it struck
the road to New York.

The Susquehannah was navigable, spring and fall, down to the Swatara,
the home of the Conlys and Whitmans, and with a birch at any time of
year. This was quite different from a market at New Orleans by water two
thousand miles away, with hostile Indians on the banks of the stream, or
by wagon road to Baltimore, and across the mountains to Philadelphia,
four horses being required to haul twenty hundred weight, and occupying
six weeks’ time. He now proposed to Emily that they should return that
way and view together that country. They found that the lands in the
valley bordering directly on the river were held very high, much above
James’ means, but that a short distance up the creek that was navigable
for small craft, land equally good could be bought for two dollars an
acre, and could be paid for in gales, as it was termed, that is, by
instalments extending to three years or even five.

“I do not incline, Emily,” said James, “to put myself in such a position
that I must wait till I am past labor and enjoyment both, before I can
obtain sufficient to be comfortable. I think it is better to pay more
for land that is improved and nearer a market, even if you have to wait
longer in the first place, for after you once purchase you must remain
or sell at a loss.”

The landlord of the public-house told James of two places in the
vicinity that had been improved and could be bought; one of which, he
said, was owned by proprietors, had a log house and hovel on it with
twenty acres cleared, and which they held at ten dollars an acre, one
hundred and sixty acres.

“That,” said James, “is the asking price.”

“They are rich and will not take less; they know land will never be
worth less on this creek.”

The other place, he said, was a great deal better place, better land and
better location, because it was on the stream, while the other was a
back lot. It had been bought and paid for by a Mr. Chadwick, but it took
all he had to pay for the land, and having not a cent to help himself
with, and having to work part of the time for others, he could not make
much improvement, and became broken down with hard work and
discouragement, and died in the struggle the winter before; that his
widow and two little children were at her brother-in-law’s at the mouth
of the creek, and she was anxious to sell, but would only sell for cash;
that it would have been bought long before but the majority of settlers
could not pay down; he never had been on it, but believed the buildings
were not much and the lot was a hundred acres.

“If the place is as good as you represent, and joins the land of the
proprietors, and will be sold cheap for cash, why don’t they buy it?”

“They mean to buy it, but are holding off to get it at their own price
because she is poor, and they know she will be obliged to sell, and I
wish that somebody would come along who has the money and take it from
between their teeth.”

“You don’t know what she asks?”

“She did ask nine dollars; don’t know what she asks now.”

Obtaining directions from the landlord, they set out to see the places.
After about four miles’ travel over a good road they then struck into
the woods over a road of very different character, but nevertheless a
very good one for the backwoods. The stumps were cut low to permit the
passage of wheels, many of them taken out, the large rocks removed and
the brooks and gullies bridged in some places with hewn timber, in
others with round logs or flat stones. They passed through clearings on
which were log and timber houses, some of them underpinned with stones
and pointed with lime mortar, and most of the houses built, of round
logs, were chinked with stone pointed with lime mortar, the chimneys
were all built of stone laid in lime mortar, and on most of the farms
were peach orchards. This road had been made by proprietors to increase
the value of their lands, and in dry weather was a very tolerable road
for teams; they also passed a limestone quarry, near which was a rude
kiln.

They now reached the proprietor’s lot; a clearing of twenty acres had
been made, ten of which were in grass, the rest pasture. A timber house
of two stories, hovel built of logs, and hogsty and corncrib; the house
had three rooms on the lower floor, stone fireplace, chimney and oven
laid in lime mortar, two glazed windows in each room and in front;
between the house and the road was a peach orchard in bearing, and a hop
vine was clinging to the corner of the house. A spring in the head of a
ravine ten rods from the dwelling afforded water.

James judged that the land was of fair quality, but broken and heavily
timbered. After examining all that portion of the lot under culture, and
the buildings, they rode on six miles farther, when they came to a very
large pine-tree, hollow, blazed, and that bore the marks of fire. This
tree had been given to James as a mark, and stood at the head of a
bridle path which they followed, and soon came in sight of the creek,
and rode through a beautiful stretch of level land, alluvial soil, and
extending along the stream. In the centre of this clearing stood a great
sugar maple, and beneath its lofty branches was nestled a diminutive
camp, built of small logs, rather poles, stuffed with moss and clay. It
was evident that stones were either not to be found upon this place or
else the occupant had not cattle to haul them, as the fireplace was made
of logs with a lining of clay, and small stones evidently water-worn and
procured from the brook.

A large branch had been torn from the tree by the wind, and falling on
the roof and chimney that was made of sticks coated with clay, had
crushed in both roof and chimney. Within ten feet of the door a
beautiful spring was bubbling out from beneath the spur roots of the
maple. The hovel was much larger and higher than the dwelling, which
would not have admitted a horse, being too low, and boasted a good bark
roof; it was of sufficient size to contain six head of cattle and
considerable hay.

It was already far past noon and they sat down by the spring to quench
their thirst, bait their horses and partake of a luncheon.

“It is,” said James, “idle for us to think any more of the other place
at present, as it is beyond my means, and I will not run in debt, my
only object in looking at it was to compare prices. It is possible this
place may not do, but there is not time to examine as thoroughly as I
should like, we will go back and come again to-morrow.”

They returned again next morning in such season as to have the greater
part of the day before them, and after a thorough examination, James
said,—

“This place is worth two of the other for any poor man to get his living
on, and I know if it will come within my means it is the place for me.
What do you think of it. Do you feel as though you could ever make it
feel like home?”

“My home will be where my husband finds it for his interest to be, and
there shall I be content and happy, provided I can have sheep and cows,
and flax, and spinning and weaving enough to do, that I may carry my
part of the load in the way mother brought me up from childhood. But, to
tell the truth, I should not have to try very hard to like this place,
for it is the sweetest spot I ever saw.”

“I like the place, but must be governed entirely by the possibility of
being able to pay for it and to get my living from it afterwards.”

“I can’t help feeling a little sad as I sit by this spring of which they
drank, look upon that roof that once sheltered them, now all fallen in,
and recollect that they came here no doubt building castles in the air
as you and I do, and full of hope as we are, thinking what they would
do; and then the husband was taken sick and, as the landlord expressed
it, died in the struggle for a homestead.”

“The man died,” said James, who had not one bit of sentiment about him,
“of a broken heart, and the reason that his heart broke was because he
paid his last cent for land, and looked no farther, a thing no man
should ever do.”

“Perhaps he liked the place, and his wife liked it, and wanted to live
here and nowhere else.”

“I like the place, but I shall not buy it and go on it without a cent.”

James ascertained that the stream in its windings had formed a tongue of
alluvial soil equal in extent to all the cleared land on the place, and
which was concealed from his view the day before by the forest. It was
overflowed and dressed by the spring and fall freshets and bore an
abundance of grass, and by cutting a few bushes and removing the rafts
of driftwood could be enlarged. This added vastly to the value of the
land, particularly to an emigrant, as a stock of cattle could be kept at
once, the openings in the woods affording with the browse sufficient
pasturage in summer. He also found that the next lot of a hundred and
sixty acres was government land, could be bought for two dollars an
acre, or one dollar and sixty cents cash, and that on this lot was a
mill-site.

“Now, Emily, we have seen all there is to be seen, and talked the matter
over, I want to know if you like this place well enough for a home,
because when I go to see this woman to know if she will take what I can
give, I shall close the bargain. My own mind is made up that for me this
is home.”

“My mind is made up; this is my home.”

The next morning, James went to find Mrs. Chadwick. She held the place
at nine dollars an acre; said she had held it at ten; that everybody who
was a judge of land said that it was worth more than the Ainsworth
place, that the proprietors held at ten dollars, and that she must have
cash.

James replied that the place had no buildings but a brush camp, only six
acres cleared; that he expected to pay cash, but not so much as that.

Mrs. Chadwick said in reply, as James very well knew, that though there
were but six acres cleared, yet by reason of the natural grass that grew
on the intervale, it cut as much hay as the other place, that had twenty
acres cleared by fire and axe.

After talking a while she fell to eight and a half. James replied that
he compassionated her misfortunes, and wished she might get ten dollars,
and even more, per acre, but that he was a young man just starting in
life, had but seven hundred and sixty dollars in the world, but could
get enough more to make up to eight hundred, and would give that, she
replied,—

“Can I have any time to think of it? I would like to consult my
brother-in-law.”

“I am going through here to-morrow on my way home. I will call then and
get your mind.”

When upon his return, he told what he had said to Mrs. Chadwick, Emily
replied,—

“I do not see how you could offer eight hundred for the land, when you
have got but seven hundred and sixty, and you have always said that you
never would spend all you had, to get a piece of land, and then be
obliged to go on it without a cent to help yourself with.”

“Nor do I intend to do it either. Arthur Nevins has been coaxing me for
several months to sell the colt to him. He’s an extra colt, and I don’t
know but he’ll make as good a horse as old Frank. He has offered me a
hundred and ten dollars for him. I am going to ask him a hundred and
twenty. I know he’ll give it; if not, there’s another who will, and I
shall have eighty dollars left.”

“Is that enough to begin with?”

“Many have begun with less, but that is not my method of looking at
things. I shall work for Mr. Whitman this summer, trap with William next
winter, and if Mrs. Chadwick takes me up, go on to the place in the
spring or early in the fall. If she won’t sell, I shall by that time
have sufficient, by the blessing of God,—as grandfather, if he was
living, would say,—to buy a place in this region equally good. There are
always people enough who are unfortunate or fickle-minded, who want to
sell.”

James slept but very little that night, for his heart was set upon
getting that land, and more especially since he saw that his companion
was equally desirous of making it her home.

Miss Conly had told the landlord’s wife that James could run land, and
by the time they were up in the morning, the landlord told James that
there was a gentleman in the bar-room inquiring for a surveyor, for the
only person in that place who surveyed land was sick with a rheumatic
fever, and asked him if he could go, to which James replied that he had
no instruments with him, but the landlord urged him to go and see the
man, for doubtless they could obtain the sick man’s chain and compass.
James told the man if it was merely measuring land to ascertain the
number of rods, feet or acres, he would go after he had met his
engagement with Mrs. Chadwick, but if it was a matter of contested
lines, he must get some person of more experience. The man replied there
was no other person to be obtained without going a great distance, that
there was no dispute about titles, but his work would be merely to
divide a large body of land into lots, and lay out roads through it.

James lost no time in going to see the lady, who by the advice of her
relatives, had concluded to accept his offer, and he paid her fifty
dollars to hold the bargain till he could obtain the money at home. The
next day he went on the survey, and was occupied five days, at two
dollars and seventy-five cents a day, and paid but a trifle for the use
of the instruments.

“Grandfather was right,” said James, as they rode away from the inn,
“when he urged me to study surveying, and would make me, when Saturday
afternoons came and I wanted to work in the shop, go with Walter Conly
and measure and plot land, and learn the use of instruments. He said it
would put many a dollar in my pocket, and it has already put in almost
fourteen.”

                              CHAPTER XXI.
                            THE BRUSH CAMP.

Great was the uproar when Bertie and Peter found that James was going to
sell the colt.

“Husband,” said Mrs. Whitman, “I do hope you are not going to let James
part with that colt he has brought up, and thinks so much of. Give him
the money to pay for his land,—he only lacks forty dollars,—and let him
keep his colt.”

But Mr. Whitman was firm. “James,” he said, “was getting along well, let
him struggle, it was better for him, too much help was worse than none;
when he is sick or unfortunate ‘twill be time enough to give him. I had
rather give him a chance to help himself,” and with that view he gave
him twenty-seven dollars a month for the summer, and also half an acre
to plant or sow, and Bertie and Peter the same.

James sent on his money and received a deed of the land, and through Mr.
Creech, the landlord with whom he had put up, made arrangements with
Prescott, his nearest neighbor, to fell the trees on an acre of land.

When the time drew near for James to start for the Monongahela, Bertie
said to him,—

“What will you do for a horse now you have sold the colt? I mean to ask
father to let you have Frank.”

“I don’t want him, Bertie, as I shall go right to my place from
trapping, and you will want Frank early in the spring. I have nothing to
carry but a rifle; my traps are all there. I shall go afoot or in one of
the wagons that haul goods over the mountains, and in the spring I can
buy a horse there or a mule for ten dollars, and sell him this side of
the mountains for seventy-five, perhaps a hundred.”

The night before he started, Miss Conly said to him,—

“You will be at work on the place before we meet again, I want you to
promise me one thing, and that is that you will not tear down the camp,
for I intend to live in it.”

“That is the very first thing I intended to do.”

“I thought as much; well, don’t you do it, I don’t want you should.”

“But you wouldn’t think of moving into such a place as that, and I could
not consent that you should.”

“Why not? Did not Mrs. Chadwick live there four years with a sick
husband and two little children? I hope I can do what any other woman
has done.”

“I don’t doubt that, but there is no necessity. I intend in the spring
to get Mr. Prescott’s oxen and haul some of the trees he will cut this
fall to the spot, hew them, and put up a comfortable timber house.”

“You will have work enough to do without that. It is a great expense to
_begin_; we must lessen it all we can. It will be but little work to
repair that camp, and when we are on the spot and you have cattle of
your own, and your tools are all there, you can do it in the intervals
of other work, and can do it much more to your mind.”

“That is all true, Emily, but——”

“But what?”

“Do you think I want to take you into the woods to suffer?”

“I have not the least idea of suffering unless I am called to. Then, I
trust, I shall be supported. Tell me honestly, cannot such a camp be
made comfortable? You know well enough what I mean by that?”

Thus appealed to, James hesitated, looked every way but at her, and
finally said,—

“It is true that the camp can be made a shelter from rain and snow, and
can be kept warm.”

“Warm enough?”

“Yes, hot as an oven, for it is not much larger,” said James, with a
groan; “but what a hole to take you from a good home and put you into.”

“I was born in a log house and passed my childhood in it, and one not
much better than that camp, nor much larger, and there were seven of us.
Sister and William tell of what they have been through. Father and
mother and our boys are always telling the neighbors of how much William
and Mary have been through and how resolute they are and faculized. I
mean to have something to tell of and be praised for. Come, promise, you
may put down a floor in the camp and make it three poles higher, that I
may have room for my loom and spinning wheel, and that the wheels and
loom may stand firm on the floor. I don’t care whether there’s any
chimney or not. We didn’t have any in our log house for years, and the
hole in the roof was about as good, for the clay was all the time
falling off the cob-work and dropping into mother’s pots and
frying-pan.”

“You won’t want to stay there long, I hope?”

“Only till we can see our way clear to build a log house.”

James reluctantly promised, and they parted. He set forth, mounted on
Frank. Bertie took Dick and accompanied him to the foot of the North
Mountain. He then took his pack and rifle, and proceeded on foot, while
Bertie went back with the horses.

Starting much earlier in the season than before, they abandoned the Big
Beaver and went on the Little Beaver, and far up that stream. They met
with fewer beavers, but more otters, and took in log traps and in one
large steel trap which they possessed, and by killing with the rifle,
more bears than ever before, so that although they went farther and came
out of the woods much earlier (as James wanted to go on his land), they
obtained furs to the amount of five hundred and twenty-five dollars.
When they were at the mouth of the Little Beaver, on their return, they
met some Delaware Indians on their way to Pittsburg, encamped on the
bank of the main river, their canoes turned up on the grass.

“I want a birch as I am going to live on a stream. I wonder if I can buy
one, of these Indians?” said James.

“You can buy anything of an Indian, but his rifle or tomahawk, but if
you buy one take that dark-colored one, even if they ask more for it,
because the bark of which it is made was peeled in the winter and it is
worth, double.”

“I thought bark wouldn’t run in the winter?”

“It will if you pour hot water on it or hold a torch to the tree.”

James, after considerable talk with the Indians, who wanted him to take
another one, bought the dark-colored birch. It was twenty-eight feet in
length, twenty inches deep, and four feet six inches wide. It required a
person possessed of the strength of James to carry it, as it was a load
for two Indians, but James, much to the astonishment of the savages,
turned the birch over his head and took it to the water. He now took all
his traps and some tools that he had carried to make dead-falls, and
parted with William and Mary, much to their regret, as they had
cherished the hope that he would settle near _them_.

Jonathan Whitman had told him before he left home if he could find a
good young horse that would weigh twelve hundred, and was used to team
work, to buy him, for Frank was failing somewhat, and he wanted to favor
his faithful servant and should not work him much more. He hired a
wagoner to haul the traps and canoe and other articles to the
Susquehannah at Harristown, bought a horse, pack-saddle, and some tools;
an axe, auger, trowel, chain, and handsaw, irons made at a blacksmith’s
to peel bark, irons for a whiffletree. He also bought some white paper
and oiled it, and a window sash with six squares of glass in it, put his
traps and other matters into the birch, and managed at a small expense
to send his horse to Mr. Creech his former landlord. He then got into
the birch and, having a fair wind to start with, made a sail of his
blanket, and by alternate sailing and paddling landed at length in the
early twilight before his own camp. At the gray dawn and while it was
still dark in the forest, he took his way to the brook with his rifle on
his arm, and returned with two wood-ducks, one of which together with
the provisions in his pack, furnished him with a substantial breakfast.

His nearest neighbor, Prescott, had been ten years on his clearing and
kept a large stock of cattle. His family consisted of three strong,
active boys, Dan, the eldest, being nineteen, which enabled him to work
for others when disposed. James had engaged with Prescott the previous
spring to cut all the grass to be found in the field pasture and
openings in the woods, and to fell in the course of the summer an acre
of trees; upon looking around he found the work all done, and the felled
trees in just the right state to burn.

James now sat down under the shadow of the great maple to reflect, and
lay his plans for a summer’s work, and to make the most of his means. He
had left in Bertie’s care at Swatara, when he went into the woods, two
hundred and fifteen dollars, after paying for his land. This money was
the result of the sale of the colt, his summer’s work with Mr. Whitman,
the proceeds of his potato crop, and the money he had earned on his way
home by surveying. He could not expect however to obtain two dollars and
three quarters a day in future for surveying, two dollars was the
customary price, but in the former case he was delayed on his journey,
and kept on expense, and his employer had not the time to go for another
surveyor at a great distance.

When James left Mr. Whitman’s he took but five dollars with him. He
obtained his birch of the Indians by barter, letting them have some of
his traps in exchange. They had sold their furs at Pittsburg; but the
buying of the horse, tools, and other expenses, and the money due Mr.
Prescott for labor, brought it down to about one hundred and eighty-six
dollars, and there was much still to be bought. The money for the horse,
however, would be repaid by Mr. Whitman, who would take the beast off
his hands, and in the meantime James would have the use of him. He had
carpenter’s tools enough for ordinary purposes, but not a single farming
implement, not even a narrow axe, only a broad axe, and no seed to sow
or plant, and all the harness he had in which to work his horse was a
pack-saddle, an open bridle, and no description of cart or sled.

Having matured his plans, he cooked the remaining duck for his dinner,
put in his purse the money he intended to use, hid the rest under a heap
of stones, and swinging his pack started for Prescott’s.

When settling with him he found that there was a great difference in
wages between the place he was now in and Swatara. He could hire
Prescott for fifty cents a day, his oxen at the same price, and Dan for
two shillings.

Arriving at Creech’s, he was received with great cordiality, and found
there his horse and pack-saddle. He inquired in regard to the surveyor,
and was informed that the rheumatic fever had left him a cripple on
crutches.

“The best thing you can do, Mr. Renfew,” said Creech, “if you mean to
settle here, is to buy his instruments.” James bought them for fifteen
dollars, and told Creech if he heard of any one that wanted land run, to
send them to him.

He bought a narrow axe, and what farming tools he needed for the
present, and some rope and nails, and returned; put the fire into his
trees, and got a good burn. With the rope and cedar-bark for a
breastplate he contrived, by chopping the logs into short lengths, to
twitch and roll them together sufficiently for a second burn, and
planted his corn. He was dropping the last kernels of his corn when a
man, sent by the proprietors, came to ask if he would go twenty miles
into the woods to lay out a road, and measure some lots; that they would
send three men to his place, one to carry the chain, and two to clear
the way, if he concluded to go. They thought it would take about ten
days.

James replied that he must have the next day to make his preparations,
and would then be ready to go.

He hired Prescott to plough and sow to wheat two acres of ground; plant
half an acre with potatoes, except a few rods reserved for beans.

When James returned, his first care was to peel hemlock bark, and put
the bark under pressure to flatten the sheets to cover the roof, and to
cut the timber for the roof, and logs to raise the walls, and haul them
to the camp.

There was a mill at the mouth of the creek, and from thence he brought,
in his birch, boards to lay a floor, make an outside door and a large
chest, with a cover and partings, for cornmeal and flour.

James rather exceeded the instructions of Emily, and raised the wall
high enough to make a good chamber above; laid the floor with boards,
and made a ladder to reach it.

He went seven miles to a limekiln and brought lime in the pockets of the
pack-saddle, that would contain half a bushel each, and built a
fireplace and chimney of stones, with the chimney at the end of the camp