husetts? At any rate, they could live together in
Tripp's Cove, as they wintered together at Valley Forge, at Bennett's
Hollow, by the Green Licks, and in the Lykens Intervale. This was the
question which Samuel Cutts wanted to solve, and which the fatal figures
219-7 put him in the way of solving.

"Tripp's Cove is our Christmas present," said Sybil Cutts to her
husband, as they went to bed. But so far removed were the habits of New
England then from the observance of ecclesiastical anniversaries, that
no one else had remembered that day that it was Christmas which was
passing.

CHAPTER II.

TRIPP'S COVE.

Call this a long preface, if you please, but it seems to me best to tell
this story so that I may explain what manner of people those were and
are who lived, live, and will live, at Tripp's Cove,--and why they have
been, are, and will be linked together, with a sort of family tie and
relationship which one does not often see in the villages self-formed or
formed at hap-hazard on the seaside, on the hillside, or in the prairies
of America. Tripp's Cove never became "the Great Mercantile City of the
Future," nor do I believe it ever will. But there Samuel Cutts lived in
a happy life for fifty years,--and there he died, honored, blessed, and
loved. By and by there came the second war with England,--the "Endymion"
came cruising along upon the coast, and picking up the fishing-boats and
the coasters, burning the ships on the stocks, or compelling the owners
to ransom them. Old General Cutts was seventy years old then; but he
was, as he had always been, the head of the settlement at Tripp's,--and
there was no lack of men younger than he, the sergeants or the
high-privates of the "Fighting Twenty-seventh," who drilled the boys of
the village for whatever service might impend. When the boys went down
to Runkin's and sent the "Endymion's" boats back to her with half their
crews dead or dying, faster than they came, old General Cutts was with
them, and took sight on his rifle as quickly and as bravely as the best
of them. And so twenty years more passed on,--and, when he was well nigh
ninety, the dear old man died full of years and full of blessings, all
because he had launched out for himself, left the life he was not fit
for, and undertaken life in which he was at home.

Yes! and because of this also, when 1861 came with its terrible alarm to
the whole country, and its call to duty, all Tripp's Cove was all right.
Th