year. We shall soon
have neighbors near at hand, and can have a school and church," said
Mr. Carew hopefully. "Colonel Allen is not journeying through the
wilderness for pleasure. He has some plan in mind to make this region
more secure for all of us. Well, tell Faithie, if she has aught to say
of going to Brandon, that she is soon to visit Aunt Priscilla. I doubt
not 'twill be best for the child."

CHAPTER V

KASHAQUA

Esther did not find the blue beads; and when her father came for her
she had not said a word to Faith about them.

Mr. Eldridge found his little daughter fully recovered from her
illness, and in better health than when she came to the Wilderness.
When she said good-bye Faith was really sorry to have her go, but she
wondered a little that Esther made no mention of the beads, for Esther
had been a model visitor since her illness. She had told Mrs. Carew
the full story of the attempt to make maple candy, which the bear had
interrupted, and she had claimed the pumpkin-shell work-box with
evident delight. All these things had made Faith confident that Esther
would return the beads before starting for home, and she was sadly
disappointed to have Esther depart without a word about them.

Esther had asked Mrs. Carew if Faith might not go to Brandon, and so
Mrs. Carew had told the little girls of the plan for Faith to go to
her Aunt Priscilla in Ticonderoga for the winter and attend school
there.

"Oh! But that's New York. Why, the 'Yorkers' want to take all the
Wilderness. I shouldn't want to go to school with 'Yorkers,'" Esther
had responded, a little scornfully.

For she had often heard her father and his friends talk of the
attempts made by the English officials of New York to drive the
settlers on the New Hampshire Grants from their homes.

"'Tis not the people of New York who would do us harm," Mrs. Carew had
answered. "And Faith will make friends, I hope, with many of her
schoolmates."

It was a beautiful October morning when Esther, seated in front of her
father on the big gray horse, with the pumpkin-shell work-box wrapped
in a safe bundle swinging from the front of the saddle, started for
Brandon. Their way for most of the journey led over a rough trail.
They would pass near the homes of many settlers, then over the lower
slopes of Mooselamoo Mountain, and skirt Lake Dunmore, and would then
find themselves on a smoother road for the remainder of their journey.

Faith walked beside