er important assistance in the
dramatic scene just pictured. After crossing the creek at the spot where
the boy's father had met his frightful and mysterious death a few months
before, the two volunteers, while still the day was new, reached the
place of the settlers' gathering.

CHAPTER III

THE AMBUSH

The house of James Breckenridge was built at the foot of a slight ridge
of land running east and west, which ridge was heavily wooded. It was
only a mile from the Twenty-Mile Line and therefore particularly open to
attack by the New York authorities. Once before had an attempt been made
by the grasping land speculators of the sister colony to oust its
rightful owner, but at that time naught but a wordy controversy had
ensued, whereas the present attack bade fair to be more serious.
Breckenridge had sent his family to the settlement in expectation of
this trouble, while he and his neighbors made ready to meet the sheriff
and his army. Some of the Bennington men had arrived at the farm the
evening before when news went forth that the invaders were only seven
miles away, at Sancock. But the greater number of the defenders came, as
did 'Siah Bolderwood and young Enoch Harding, soon after sun-up.

This gathering of Grants men was a memorable one. Heretofore, the
clashes with the Yorkers had been little more than skirmishes in which
half a dozen or a dozen men on both sides had taken part. Ethan Allen,
Seth Warner, Remember Baker, and others of the more venturesome spirits,
had seized some of the land-grabbers and their tools, and delivered upon
their bared backs more strokes of "the twigs of the wilderness," as
Allen called the blue beech rods, than the unhappy Yorkers thus treated
would forget in many a day.

Ethan Allen was not as long in the settlement as many of the other men
about him; but he was a born leader, and entering heart and soul into
the cause of the Grants was soon acknowledged the most fiery spirit
among the settlers. He was born in Litchfield, Conn., January 10, 1737,
and probably came to the Hampshire Grants some time in '69. Although but
thirty-four years old at this time he carried his point in most
arguments regarding the well-being of the settlers, and the Green
Mountain boys, as his followers came to be called, fairly worshipped
him. He was singularly handsome, with ruddy face, a ready wit, bold,
unpolished, brave and almost a giant in size, for though not so tall as
Seth Warner he was a