th
curiosity, trying to solve a puzzle that was none of my business. And
one day, to cap the matter, two woodsmen arrived at Harrodstown with
clothes frayed and bodies lean from a long journey. Not one of the
hundred questions with which they were beset would they answer, nor
say where they had been or why, save that they had carried out certain
orders of Clark, who was locked up with them in a cabin for several
hours.

The first of October, the day of Colonel Clark's departure, dawned crisp
and clear. He was to take with him the disheartened and the cowed, the
weaklings who loved neither work nor exposure nor danger. And before he
set out of the gate he made a little speech to the assembled people.

"My friends," he said, "you know me. I put the interests of Kentucky
before my own. Last year when I left to represent her at Williamsburg
there were some who said I would desert her. It was for her sake I made
that journey, suffered the tortures of hell from scalded feet, was near
to dying in the mountains. It was for her sake that I importuned the
governor and council for powder and lead, and when they refused it I
said to them, 'Gentlemen, a country that is not worth defending is not
worth claiming.'"

At these words the settlers gave a great shout, waving their coonskin
hats in the air.

"Ay, that ye did," cried Bill Cowan, "and got the amminition."

"I made that journey for her sake, I say," Colonel Clark continued, "and
even so I am making this one. I pray you trust me, and God bless and
keep you while I am gone."

He did not forget to speak to me as he walked between our lines, and
told me to be a good boy and that he would see me in the spring. Some
of the women shed tears as he passed through the gate, and many of us
climbed to sentry box and cabin roof that we might see the last of the
little company wending its way across the fields. A motley company it
was, the refuse of the station, headed by its cherished captain. So they
started back over the weary road that led to that now far-away land of
civilization and safety.

During the balmy Indian summer, when the sharper lines of nature are
softened by the haze, some came to us from across the mountains to make
up for the deserters. From time to time a little group would straggle to
the gates of the station, weary and footsore, but overjoyed at the sight
of white faces again: the fathers walking ahead with watchful eyes, the
women and older children driving