ight before was easily made comfortable for the family. She set
about this at once while Captain Baker and the neighbors sat in judgment
upon the trembling surveyor. These impromptu courts held by the Green
Mountain Boys when they happened to capture a Yorker guilty of meddling
with the settlers, were in the nature of a court martial. Sometimes the
sentences imposed were doubtless unjust, for the judges and juries were
naturally bitter against the prisoners; but the punishment seldom went
beyond a sound whipping, and in this case the surveyor, still sputtering
and objecting to the illegal procedure, was sentenced to two score
lashes, save one, and Enoch and Bryce selected the blue beech wands with
which the sentence was to be carried out.

The surveyor was taken behind the log barn, his coat and shirt stripped
from his back, and Bolderwood and one of the other neighbors fulfilled
the order of Captain Baker as judge of the military court. Bolderwood,
remembering the tears the prisoner had shed when he thought the family
burned alive, could not be too hard upon him, and although the woodsman
made every appearance of striking tremendous blows, he scarce raised a
welt upon the man's back. But when the other executioner laid on for the
last nineteen strokes, the surveyor roared with pain and without doubt
the lesson was one which did him good. It would be many a day before he
ventured to survey the lands east of the Twenty-Mile Line--at least, not
until his back stopped smarting. Finally he was given his clothing, and
part of the band marched him across country to the New York border and
turned him loose.

The attack of Simon Halpen upon the Hardings had practically failed. Yet
the loss of their home was a sore blow. In a couple of days, with the
help of Bolderwood, the old hovel was made very habitable. But it was
small and so many of their possessions had been burned that even Bryce
cried about it. Nevertheless their supply of food was all right, and the
cattle had not been injured. Also, with Bolderwood's assistance, the
three bears which the boys had so happily killed, were brought home, the
hams smoked, some of the meat salted, and the pelts stretched and dried
for winter bed coverings. By the time the snow lay deep upon the earth
the Hardings were once more comfortable.

The boys did very little trapping and hunting that winter of '72-'73 for
they could not attend to traps set very far from the ox-bow, and the
Walloo