rade. I was going by his place a little while
ago, and he had his old horse Bjax out in front of the stable, showing
him to a fur trader from the Back Country, whose horse had gone lame.

"'Yes,' says he, 'he's a fine horse, kind and sound, and I wouldn't part
with him for anything, if the other one hadn't died. I had a horse
called Ajax, that I got of one of the professors down to the college,
and the next one I bought I called Bjax. But now that Ajax is gone,
there don't seem to be no sense to the name. When I had Ajax, Bjax was
all right; but Bjax alone sounds sort of ridiculous, and I'll let you
have him cheap.'

"His black boy, Prince, was hanging round, looking as if a funeral was
going on. He stepped up, and said, 'Oh, massa, massa. Don't sell that
horse. That's just the best horse we ever had.' Then the black rascal
went behind the man, winked at me and grinned."

Late in the fall, after we had killed off some of the cattle, father
would load a couple of pack-horses with beef and pork, which he sold in
Salem. For in those days Salem was more easily reached than Boston.
Probably not more than one or two families in the town spent over twenty
Spanish dollars in the course of the year.

Money came most readily to those who had a handicraft, and there was
hardly a house on the main road in which there was not an artificer of
some kind.

[Sidenote: BEN APPRENTICED TO A BLACKSMITH]

A prudent father took care that his son learned a trade. Edmund was sent
to Concord and became a cordwainer or shoemaker. Davy Fiske was a
weaver, and soon after the fox hunt I was apprenticed to Robert
Harrington, to learn the blacksmith's trade. He was a large, strong man,
of a kindly nature, and was an excellent bass singer. As we worked
together in his shop, with his son Thaddeus, we frequently sang psalm
tunes, and his younger son Dan piped in a treble.

One day Major Ben Reed rode up, and brought his horse in to be shod.

"Well, Robert, we're going to have war again with the French. Governor
Shirley's got word that they are making a settlement and building a fort
down on our eastern frontier, and has ordered Colonel John Winslow to
raise a regiment, and go down there to put a stop to it. Captain Frye of
Littleton is raising a company, and if any of the boys want to join the
expedition, they'd better enlist with him."

Davy Fiske's two older brothers, Jonathan and John, did enlist. They
joined this company, and so did Joe Lo