212

"SHE LAY TO REST" ON HER BOULDER BED, 232

THE TEPEE ON THE GRAND RIVER, 303

CHIQUITA.

CHAPTER I.

A BOZRAH BORNIN'.

A tallow candle shed its sickly and flickering light in the front room
of an ancient farm house, as Jack Sheppard announced his arrival on
earth at four o'clock on a Friday morning. He arrived in a snowstorm,
and it was a very select gathering of some of old Bozrah's prominent
citizens who greeted his entry into the world. There was old Doctor
Pettingill, with square-rimmed, blue-glass spectacles; Grandma Paisley,
who didn't care for avoirdupois, just so it was a boy; Aunt Diantha,
with portentous air and red mittens, while in the kitchen, dozing by the
big fireplace, was Uncle Zebedee, who had driven over from Pudden Hollow
the evening before to learn the news and "set up" all night in order to
be of assistance in case of necessity.

The whole Deerfield valley was interested, and it made no difference if
the snow did play tag up and down the necks and on the faces of all
Bozrah as they brought paregoric, feather pillows, goody-goodies and all
the useful uselessnesses that each and every one had kept for years and
years awaiting a possible occasion. There was an old brass warming-pan
that Deacon Baxter used to warm the bed for Governor Winthrop, and a hot
water jug which Great-grandma Lathrop averred warmed the feet of every
one of her seventeen "darters and grand-darters." There was also a quilt
made of silk patches, each patch taken from a dress that some colonial
dame had worn when she danced the stately minuet at a great function in
Boston or Albany.

All these good people had a successful way of bringing up children in
the paths of self-reliance, respect, thrift, endurance and honesty which
made stalwart, orthodox patriots.

The Sheppards were an old English family who settled in New England late
in the seventeenth century--three brothers, one of which, according to
ye olden tyme records, planted the elm trees in front of the
meetyngehouse on Dorchester hill; these trees, at the age of sixty or
seventy years, being cut down by the British during the Revolutionary
War. The descendants of the three brothers were thrifty men, large of
physique and of great executive ability, the women the loveliest of the
colonies--families of sterling integrity, wealth and esteem.

"Thad" Sheppard, Jack's father, was in some respects an exception, he
being a man