picket-flag, when Wilderness was King.

* * * * * *

I heard the block-house gates unbar, the column's solemn tread,
I saw the Tree of a single leaf its splendid foliage shed
To wave awhile that August morn above the column's head;
I heard the moan of muffled drum, the woman's wail of fife,
The Dead March played for Dearborn's men just marching out of life;
The swooping of the savage cloud that burst upon the rank
And struck it with its thunderbolt in forehead and in flank,
The spatter of the musket-shot, the rifles' whistling rain,--
The sandhills drift round hope forlorn that never marched again."

--_Benjamin F. Taylor_.

When Wilderness Was King

CHAPTER I

A MESSAGE FROM THE WEST

Surely it was no longer ago than yesterday. I had left the scythe
lying at the edge of the long grass, and gone up through the rows of
nodding Indian corn to the house, seeking a draught of cool water from
the spring. It was hot in the July sunshine; the thick forest on every
side intercepted the breeze, and I had been at work for some hours.
How pleasant and inviting the little river looked in the shade of the
great trees, while, as I paused a moment bending over the high bank, I
could see a lazy pike nosing about among the twisted roots below.

My mother, her sleeves rolled high over her round white arms, was in
the dark interior of the milk-house as I passed, and spoke to me
laughingly; and I could perceive my father sitting in his great
splint-bottomed chair just within the front doorway, and I marked how
the slight current of air toyed with his long gray beard. The old
Bible lay wide open upon his knee; yet his eyes were resting upon the
dark green of the woods that skirted our clearing. I wondered, as I
quaffed the cool sweet water at the spring, if he was dreaming again of
those old days when he had been a man among men. How distinct in each
detail the memory of it remains! The blue sky held but one fleecy
white cloud in all its wide arch; it seemed as if the curling film of
smoke rising from our chimney had but gathered there and hung suspended
to render the azure more pronounced. A robin peeked impudently at me
from an oak limb, and a roguish gray squirrel chattered along the low
ridge-pole, with seeming willingness to make friends, until Rover,
suddenly spying me, sprang hastily around the comer of the house to
lick my hand, with glad barkings and a fra