at the East-ward,--if--if
only one of the ten great prizes should, by any marvel, fall to him. And
now Tripp's Cove--which, perhaps, he had thought of as much as he had
thought of any of the ten--had fallen to him. This was the reason why he
showed so much emotion, and why he could hardly speak, when he read the
numbers. It was because that had come to him which represented so
completely what he wanted, and yet which he had not even dared to pray
for. It was so much more than he expected,--it was the dream of years,
indeed, made true.

For Samuel Cutts had proved to himself that he was a good leader of men.
He knew he was, and many men knew it who had followed him under Carolina
suns, and in the snows of Valley Forge. Samuel Cutts knew, equally well,
that he was not a good maker of money, nor creator of pork and potatoes.
Six years of farming in the valley of the Merrimac had proved that to
him, if he had never learned it before. Samuel Cutts's dream had been,
when he went away to explore the Western Reserve, that he would like to
bring together some of the best line officers and some of the best
privates of the old "Fighting Twenty-seventh," and take them, with his
old provident skill, which had served them so well upon so many
camping-grounds, to some region where they could stand by each other
again, as they had stood by each other before, and where sky and earth
would yield them more than sky and earth have yet yielded any man in
Eastern Massachusetts. Well! as I said, the Western Reserve did not seem
to be the place. After all, "the Fighting Twenty-seventh" were not
skilled in the tilling of the land. They furnished their quota when the
boats were to be drawn through the ice of the Delaware, to assist in
Rahl's Christmas party at Trenton. Many was the embarkation at the "head
of Elk," in which the "Fighting Twenty-seventh" had provided half the
seamen for the transport. It was "the Fighting Twenty-seventh" who cut
out the "Princess Charlotte" cutter in Edisto Bay. But the "Fighting
Twenty-seventh" had never, so far as any one knew, beaten one sword
into one plough-share, nor one spear into one pruning-hook. But Tripp's
Cove seemed to offer a different prospect. Why not, with a dozen or two
of the old set, establish there, not the New Jerusalem, indeed, but
something a little more elastic, a little more helpful, a little more
alive, than these kiln-dried, sun-dried, and time-dried old towns of the
seaboard of Massac