pot." Her
eyes began to glow with the growth of her conception.

"Don't you remember how dearly Mother loved the great walnut tree that
shaded the veranda at home? She would sit gazing out over the river,
then up into its branches--dreaming happy things. She used to tell me
that she found my fairy stories there among its leaves--and there was
always a smile on her lips then."

The spring was abundantly young and where the distances lengthened they
lay in violet dreams.

"Don't you remember?" repeated the girl, but Caleb Parish looked
suddenly away. His ear had caught a distant sound of tinkling pony bells
drifting down wind and he said devoutly, "Thank God, the pack train is
coming."

It was an hour later when the loaded horses came into view herded by
fagged woodsmen and piloted by Peter Doane, who strode silently,
tirelessly, at their head. But with Peter walked another young man of
different stamp--a young man who had never been here before.

Like his fellows he wore the backwoodsman's garb, but unlike them his
tan was of newer wind-burning. Unlike them, too, he bowed with a
ceremony foreign to the wilderness and swept his coonskin cap clear of
his head.

"This man," announced Peter, brusquely, "gives the name of Kenneth
Thornton and hears a message for Captain Parish!"

The young stranger smiled, and his engaging face was quickened with the
flash of white teeth. A dark lock of hair fell over his forehead and his
firm chin was deeply cleft.

"I have the honour of bearing a letter from your brother, Sir," he said,
"and one from General Washington himself."

Peter Doane looked on, and when he saw Dorothy's eyes encounter those of
the stranger and her lashes droop and her cheeks flush pink, he turned
on his heel and with the stiffness of an affronted Indian strode
silently away.

"This letter from General Washington," said Caleb Parish, looking up
from his reading, "informs me that you have already served creditably
with our troops in the east and that you are now desirous to cast your
lot with us here. I welcome you, Sir."

Kenneth Thornton was swift to learn and when he went abroad with hunting
parties or to swing the axe in the clearings, his stern and exacting
task-masters found no fault with his strength or spirit.

Their ardent and humourless democracy detected in him no taint of the
patronizing or supercilious, and if he was new to the backwoods, he paid
his arrears of knowledge with the ready coi