Green Mountain Boys. And as Allen, Warner, and Cochran had many
"hide-outs" in the hills, where they kept munitions of war and to which
they summoned their followers by means which actually seemed to savor of
the Black Art to their enemies, it was difficult for the Yorkers to know
where it was really safe to carry on their attacks against the peaceful
grantees. Being "viewed" became a most serious matter indeed, and many a
luckless surveyor or other underling of the sheriff of Albany, carried
the blue-seal of the Green Mountain Boys upon his person for months
after an unexpected meeting with those rangers of the forest.

But the Yorkers kept away from Benningford and the surrounding district.
More farms had been taken up there by Hampshire grantees than in other
parts of the disputed ground and the reign of the Green Mountain Boys
was supreme. The Hardings had been very happy since the building of the
new house, and, as there had been a school established in the vicinity,
the girls and Harry attended for six months in the year. Kate had grown
to be a tall girl and looked like her mother, while Mary and Harry were
becoming of considerable use outside of, as well as in, the house.

Enoch and Bryce cleared a piece of woodland that year and late in the
fall there was another stump-burning. 'Siah Bolderwood came down from
his "farm" near Old Ti to join in the festivities; but several of the
young people who had attended the stump-burning three years before were
not present. Robbie Baker was up north with his father, and Lot
Breckenridge had moved away from the vicinity of Bennington; Crow Wing
did not come to try his skill at wrestling with Enoch, so the latter sat
by with 'Siah as one of the judges, for he was older than the other
contestants. Lot's mother had married a man named Lewis who owned and
worked a farm much nearer the Connecticut River, in the town of
Westminster, and after his return from their winter's trapping the
spring before, Lot had gone across the mountains to work for his
stepfather.

Lot had always been his dearest friend and Enoch missed him sorely, and
as he could not go trapping with him this winter, he agreed to visit
Westminster for a fortnight or so, some time during the idle months. It
was March when he started to cross the range and although the roads were
still full of snow, he went horseback. A sleigh was a luxury that few
Bennington people owned, although Nuck might have hitched the old
w