m."

CHAPTER X

THE MAJOR'S DAUGHTERS

The day that school began Faith returned home to find that a letter
from her mother and father had arrived. It was a long letter, telling
the little girl of all the happenings since her departure at the
pleasant cabin in the Wilderness. Her father had shot a deer, which
meant a good supply of fresh meat. Kashaqua had brought the good news
of Faith's arrival at her aunt's house; and, best of all, her father
wrote that before the heavy snows and severe winter cold began he
should make the trip to Ticonderoga to be sure that his little
daughter was well and happy.

But there was one sentence in her mother's letter that puzzled Faith.
"Your father will bring your blue beads," her mother had written, and
Faith could not understand it, for she was sure Esther had the beads.
She had looked in the box in the sitting-room closet after Esther's
departure, hoping that Esther might have put them back before
starting for home, but the box had been empty.

"Who brought my letter, Uncle Phil?" she questioned, but her uncle did
not seem to hear.

"Father got it from a man in a canoe when we were down at the shore.
The man hid----"

"Never mind, Hugh. You must not repeat what you see, even at home,"
said Mr. Scott.

So Faith asked no more questions. She knew that the Green Mountain
Boys sent messengers through the Wilderness; and that Americans all
through the Colonies were kept notified of what the English soldiers
stationed in those northern posts were doing or planning. She was sure
that some such messenger had brought her letter; and, while she
wondered if it might have been her friend Ethan Allen, she had learned
since her stay in her uncle's house that he did not like to be
questioned in regard to his visitors from across the lake.

"I'll begin a letter to mother dear this very night, so it will be all
ready when father comes," she said, thinking of all she longed to tell
her mother about Louise, the school and her pretty new dresses.

"So you did not bring your beads," said Aunt Prissy, as she read Mrs.
Carew's letter. "Did you forget them?"

Faith could feel her face flush as she replied: "No, Aunt Prissy." She
wished that she could tell her aunt just why she had felt obliged to
give them to Esther Eldridge, and how puzzled she was at her mother's
reference to the beads. Faith was already discovering that a secret
may be a very unpleasant possession.

As she thought