instantly recalled my father to the demands of hospitality.

"Friend," he said, speaking firmly, "hitch to the stump yonder, and
come in. You have brought me sad news enough, yet are no less welcome,
and must break bread at our board. John," and he turned toward me,
"see to friend Burns's horse, and help your mother to prepare the
dinner."

Out in the rude shed, which, answered as a kitchen during summer
weather, I ventured to ask:

"Mother, do you suppose he will take the little girl?"

"I hope so, John," she answered, soberly; "but your father must decide
himself. He will not tell us until he has thought it all out alone."

CHAPTER II

THE CALL OF DUTY

It was upon my mind all through that long afternoon, as I swung the
scythe in the meadow grass. I saw Burns ride away up the river trail
soon after I returned to work, and wondered if he bore with him any
message from my father. It was like a romance to me, to whom so few
important things had ever happened. In some way, the coming of this
letter out of the great unknown had lifted me above the narrow life of
the clearing. My world had always been so small, such a petty and
restricted circle, that this new interest coming within its horizon had
widened it wonderfully.

I had grown up on the border, isolated from what men term civilization;
and I could justly claim to know chiefly those secrets which the
frontier teaches its children. My only remembrance of a different mode
of life centred about the ragged streets of a small New England
village, where I had lived in earlier childhood. Ever since, we had
been in the depths of the backwoods; and after my father's accident I
became the one upon whom the heavier part of the work fell. I had
truly thrived upon it. In my hunting-trips, during the dull seasons, I
learned many a trick of the forest, and had already borne rifle twice
when the widely scattered settlements were called to arms by Indian
forays. There were no schools in that country; indeed, our nearest
neighbor was ten miles distant as the crow flies. But my mother had
taught me, with much love and patience, from her old treasured
school-books; and this, with other lore from the few choice volumes my
father clung to through his wanderings, gave me much to ponder over. I
still remember the evenings when he read to us gravely out of his old
Shakespeare, dwelling tenderly upon passages he loved. And he
instructed me in other things,--in h