er; "the boy was the pride of the family.
My other children are as nothing to him!"

"Say not so, good woman," returned the father, glancing his eye a little
proudly at the athletic train which followed, at no great distance,
in the rear". Say not so, old Eester, for few fathers and mothers have
greater reason to be boastful than ourselves."

"Thankful, thankful," muttered the humbled woman; "ye mean thankful,
Ishmael!"

"Then thankful let it be, if you like the word better, my good
girl,--but what has become of Nelly and the young? The child has
forgotten the charge I gave her, and has not only suffered the children
to sleep, but, I warrant you, is dreaming of the fields of Tennessee
at this very moment. The mind of your niece is mainly fixed on the
settlements, I reckon."

"Ay, she is not for us; I said it, and thought it, when I took her,
because death had stripped her of all other friends. Death is a sad
worker in the bosom of families, Ishmael! Asa had a kind feeling to the
child, and they might have come one day into our places, had things been
so ordered."

"Nay, she is not gifted for a frontier wife, if this is the manner she
is to keep house while the husband is on the hunt. Abner, let off your
rifle, that they may know we ar' coming. I fear Nelly and the young ar'
asleep." The young man complied with an alacrity that manifested how
gladly he would see the rounded, active figure of Ellen, enlivening
the ragged summit of the rock. But the report was succeeded by neither
signal nor answer of any sort. For a moment, the whole party stood in
suspense, awaiting the result, and then a simultaneous impulse caused
the whole to let off their pieces at the same instant, producing a
noise which might not fail to reach the ears of all within so short a
distance.

"Ah! there they come at last!" cried Abiram, who was usually among
the first to seize on any circumstance which promised relief from
disagreeable apprehensions.

"It is a petticoat fluttering on the line," said Esther; "I put it there
myself."

"You ar' right; but now she comes; the jade has been taking her comfort
in the tent!"

"It is not so," said Ishmael, whose usually inflexible features were
beginning to manifest the uneasiness he felt. "It is the tent itself
blowing about loosely in the wind. They have loosened the bottom, like
silly children as they ar', and unless care is had, the whole will come
down!"

The words were scarcely uttered befo