ur boys are off in the hill towns fighting
Cherokees. I wish the devils had every one of your fat sculps. Polly
Ann, water the nags."

Hans replied to this sally with great vigor, lapsing into Dutch. Polly
Ann led the scrawny ponies to the trough, but her eyes snapped with
merriment as she listened. She was a wonderfully comely lass, despite
her loose cotton gown and poke-bonnet and the shoepacks on her feet.
She had blue eyes, the whitest, strongest of teeth, and the rosiest of
faces.

"Gran'pa hates a Dutchman wuss'n pizen," she said to me. "So do I. We've
all been burned out and sculped up river--and they never give us so much
as a man or a measure of corn."

I helped her feed the animals, and tether them, and loose their bells
for the night, and carry the packs under cover.

"All the boys is gone to join Rutherford and lam the Indians," she
continued, "so Gran'pa and I had to go to the settlements. There wahn't
any one else. What's your name?" she demanded suddenly.

I told her.

She sat down on a log at the corner of the house, and pulled me down
beside her.

"And whar be you from?"

I told her. It was impossible to look into her face and not tell her.
She listened eagerly, now with compassion, and now showing her white
teeth in amusement. And when I had done, much to my discomfiture, she
seized me in her strong arms and kissed me.

"Poor Davy," she cried, "you ain't got a home. You shall come home with
us."

Catching me by the hand, she ran like a deer across the road to where
her grandfather was still quarrelling violently with Hans, and pulled
him backward by the skirts of his hunting shirt. I looked for another
and mightier explosion from the old backwoodsman, but to my astonishment
he seemed to forget Hans's existence, and turned and smiled on her
benevolently.

"Polly Ann," said he, "what be you about now?"

"Gran'pa," said she, "here's Davy Trimble, who's a good boy, and his pa
is just killed by the Cherokees along with Baskin, and he wants work and
a home, and he's comin' along with us."

"All right, David," answered Mr. Ripley, mildly, "ef Polly Ann says so,
you kin come. Whar was you raised?"

I told him on the upper Yadkin.

"You don't tell me," said he. "Did ye ever know Dan'l Boone?"

"I did, indeed, sir," I answered, my face lighting up. "Can you tell me
where he is now?"

"He's gone to Kaintuckee, them new settlements, fer good. And ef I
wasn't eighty years old, I'd go thar, t