of the Algonquin house were no
more comparable to the fighting tribes of the West than a Highland
caddie in an Edinburgh close is to a hill Macdonald with a claymore.
But the common Virginian would admit no peril, though now and then some
rough landward fellow would lay down his spade, spit moodily, and tell
me a grim tale. I had ever the notion to visit Frew and finish my
education.

It was not till the tobacco ships had gone and the autumn had grown
late that I got the chance. The trees were flaming scarlet and saffron
as I rode west through the forests to his house on the South Fork
River. There, by a wood fire in the October dusk, he fed me on wild
turkey and barley bread, and listened silently to my tale.

He said nothing when I spoke of my schemes for getting the better of
the Englishman and winning Virginia to my side. Profits interested him
little, for he grew his patch of corn and pumpkins, and hunted the deer
for his own slender needs. Once he broke in on my rigmarole with a
piece of news that fluttered me.

"You mind the big man you were chasing that night you and me first
forgathered? Well, I've seen him."

"Where?" I cried, all else forgotten.

"Here, in this very place, six weeks syne. He stalked in about ten o'
the night, and lifted half my plenishing. When I got up in my bed to
face him he felled me. See, there's the mark of it," and he showed a
long scar on his forehead. "He went off with my best axe, a gill of
brandy, and a good coat. He was looking for my gun, too, but that was
in a hidy-hole. I got up next morning with a dizzy head, and followed
him nigh ten miles. I had a shot at him, but I missed, and his legs
were too long for me. Yon's the dangerous lad."

"Where did he go, think you?" I asked.

"To the hills. To the refuge of every ne'er-do-weel. Belike the Indians
have got his scalp, and I'm not regretting it."

I spent three days with Frew, and each day I had the notion that he was
putting me to the test. The first day he took me over the river into a
great tangle of meadow and woodland beyond which rose the hazy shapes
of the western mountains. The man was twenty years my elder, but my
youth was of no avail against his iron strength. Though I was hard and
spare from my travels in the summer heat, 'twas all I could do to keep
up with him, and only my pride kept me from crying halt. Often when he
stopped I could have wept with fatigue, and had no breath for a word,
but his taciturnity