one which satisfied his spirit. Having finished his letter, at last,
he read it aloud to his father and mother one evening as they sat
together, by the fireside, after the rest of the family had gone to
bed. Tears of pride came to the eyes of the man and woman when the
long letter was finished.

"I love old England," it said, "because it is your home and because it
was the home of my fathers. But I am sure it is not old England which
made the laws we hate and sent soldiers to Boston. Is it not another
England which the King and his ministers invented? I ask you to be
true to old England which, my father has told me, stood for justice and
human rights.

"But after all, what has politics to do with you and me as a pair of
human beings? Our love is a thing above that. The acts of the King or
my fellow countrymen can not affect my love for you, and to know that
you are of the same mind holds me above despair. I would think it a
great hardship if either King or colony had the power to put a tax on
you--a tax which demanded my principles. Can not your father differ
with me in politics--although when you were here I made sure that he
agreed with us--and keep his faith in me as a gentleman? I can not
believe that he would like me if I had a character so small and so
easily shifted about that I would change it to please him. I am sure,
too, that if there is anything in me you love, it is my character.
Therefore, if I were to change it I should lose your love and his
respect also. Is that not true?"

This was part of the letter which Jack had written.

"My boy, it is a good letter and they will have to like you the better
for it," said John Irons.

Old Solomon Binkus was often at the Irons home those days. He had gone
back in the bush, since the war ended, and, that winter, his traps were
on many streams and ponds between Albany and Lake Champlain. He came
down over the hills for a night with his friends when he reached the
southern end of his beat. It was probably because the boy had loved
the tales of the trapper and the trapper had found in the boy something
which his life had missed, that an affection began to grow up between
them. Solomon was a childless widower.

"My wife! I tell ye, sir, she had the eyes an' feet o' the young doe
an' her cheeks were like the wild, red rose," the scout was wont to say
on occasion. "I orto have knowed better. Yes, sir, I orto. We lived
way back in the bush an' the