e. The sun lay in
the heavens a ball of gold, and a fine haze, like a misty golden veil,
hung over the forest. It was Indian summer.

Then Indian summer passed and winter, which was very early that year,
came roaring down on Wareville. The autumn broke up in a cold rain which
soon turned to snow. The wind swept out of the northwest, bitter and
chill, and the desolate forest, every bough stripped of its leaves,
moaned before the blast.

But it was cheerful, when the sleet beat upon the roof and the cold wind
rattled the rude shutters, to sit before the big fires and watch them
sparkle and blaze.

There was another reason why Henry should now begin to spend much of his
time indoors. The Rev. Silas Pennypacker opened his school for the
winter, and it was necessary for Henry to attend. Many of the pioneers
who crossed the mountains from the Eastern States and founded the great
Western outpost of the nation in Kentucky were men of education and
cultivation, with a knowledge of books and the world. They did not
intend that their children should grow up mere ignorant borderers, but
they wished their daughters to have grace and manners and their sons to
become men of affairs, fit to lead the vanguard of a mighty race. So a
first duty in the wilderness was to found schools, and this they did.

The Reverend Silas was no lean and thin body, no hanger-on upon stronger
men, but of fine girth and stature with a red face as round as the full
moon, a glorious laugh and the mellowest voice in the colony. He was by
repute a famous scholar who could at once give the chapter and text of
any verse in the Bible and had twice read through the ponderous history
of the French gentleman, M. Rollin. It was said, too, that he had nearly
twenty volumes of some famous romances by a French lady, one
Mademoiselle de Scudery, brought over the mountains in a box, but of
this Henry and Paul could not speak with certainty, as a certain wooden
cupboard in Mr. Pennypacker's house was always securely locked.

But the teacher was a favorite in the settlement with both men and
women. A sight of his cheerful face was considered good enough to cure
chills and fever, and for the matter of that he was an expert hand with
both ax and rifle. His uses in Wareville were not merely mental and
spiritual. He was at all times able and willing to earn his own bread
with his own strong hands, though the others seldom permitted him to do
so.

Henry entered school with