were anxious to return to the beautiful fields of
Kentucky. During the few months he remained on the Yadkin, he was busy
in converting every particle of property he possessed into money, and in
raising every dollar he could for the purchase of lands he so greatly
desired. The sum he obtained amounted to about twenty thousand dollars,
in the depreciated paper currency of that day. To Daniel Boone this was
a large sum. With this the simple-hearted man started for Richmond to
pay it to the State Treasurer, and to obtain for it the promised
certificate. He was also entrusted with quite large sums of money from
his neighbors, for a similar purpose.

On his way he was robbed of every dollar. It was a terrible blow to him,
for it not only left him penniless, but exposed him to the insinuation
of having feigned the robbery, that he might retain the money entrusted
to him by his friends. Those who knew Daniel Boone well would have no
more suspected him of fraud than an angel of light. With others however,
his character suffered. Rumor was busy in denouncing him.

Colonel Nathaniel Hart had entrusted Boone with two thousand nine
hundred pounds. This of course was all gone. A letter, however, is
preserved from Colonel Hart, which bears noble testimony to the
character of the man from whom he had suffered:

"I observe what you say respecting our losses by Daniel Boone. I had
heard of the misfortune soon after it happened, but not of my being a
partaker before now. I feel for the poor people who perhaps are to lose
their pre-emptions. But I must say I feel more for Boone, whose
character I am told suffers by it. Much degenerated must the people of
this age be, when amongst them are to be found men to censure and blast
the reputation of a person so just and upright, and in whose breast is a
seat of virtue too pure to admit of a thought so base and dishonorable.
I have known Boone in times of old, when poverty and distress had him
fast by the hand, and in these wretched circumstances, I have ever
found him of a noble and generous soul, despising everything mean, and
therefore I will freely grant him a discharge for whatever sums of mine
he might have been possessed at the time."

Boone was now forty-five years of age, but the hardships to which he had
been exposed had borne heavily upon him, and he appeared ten years
older. Though he bore without a murmur the loss of his earthly all, and
the imputations which were cast upon his ch