me I heard them in argument, and in their talk there was much about the
Congress, and a woman named Flora Macdonald, and a British fleet sailing
southward.

"We'll have two thousand Highlanders and more to meet the fleet. And
ye'll sit at hame, in this hovel ye've made yeresel" (and he glanced
about disdainfully) "and no help the King?" He brought his fist down on
the pine boards.

"Ye did no help the King greatly at Culloden, Duncan," said my father,
dryly.

Our visitor did not answer at once.

"The Yankee Rebels 'll no help the House of Stuart," said he, presently.
"And Hanover's coom to stay. Are ye, too, a Rebel, Alec Ritchie?"

I remember wondering why he said RITCHIE.

"I'll no take a hand in this fight," answered my father.

And that was the end of it. The man left with scant ceremony, I guiding
him down the creek to the main trail. He did not open his mouth until I
parted with him.

"Puir Davy," said he, and rode away in the night, for the moon shone
through the clouds.

I remember these things, I suppose, because I had nothing else to think
about. And the names stuck in my memory, intensified by later events,
until I began to write a diary.

And now I come to my travels. As the spring drew on I had had a feeling
that we could not live thus forever, with no market for our pelts. And
one day my father said to me abruptly:--

"Davy, we'll be travelling."

"Where?" I asked.

"Ye'll ken soon enough," said he. "We'll go at crack o' day."

We went away in the wild dawn, leaving the cabin desolate. We loaded the
white mare with the pelts, and my father wore a woollen suit like that
of our Scotch visitor, which I had never seen before. He had clubbed his
hair. But, strangest of all, he carried in a small parcel the silk gown
that had been my mother's. We had scant other baggage.

We crossed the Yadkin at a ford, and climbing the hills to the south of
it we went down over stony traces, down and down, through rain and sun;
stopping at rude cabins or taverns, until we came into the valley of
another river. This I know now was the Catawba. My memories of that ride
are as misty as the spring weather in the mountains. But presently the
country began to open up into broad fields, some of these abandoned to
pines. And at last, splashing through the stiff red clay that was up to
the mare's fetlocks, we came to a place called Charlotte Town. What a
day that was for me! And how I gaped at the houses there, finer