than
any I had ever dreamed of! That was my first sight of a town. And how I
listened open-mouthed to the gentlemen at the tavern! One I recall had a
fighting head with a lock awry, and a negro servant to wait on him, and
was the principal spokesman. He, too, was talking of war. The Cherokees
had risen on the western border. He was telling of the massacre of a
settlement, in no mild language.

"Sirs," he cried, "the British have stirred the redskins to this. Will
you sit here while women and children are scalped, and those devils" (he
called them worse names) "Stuart and Cameron go unpunished?"

My father got up from the corner where he sat, and stood beside the man.

"I ken Alec Cameron," said he.

The man looked at him with amazement.

"Ay?" said he, "I shouldn't think you'd own it. Damn him," he cried, "if
we catch him we'll skin him alive."

"I ken Cameron," my father repeated, "and I'll gang with you to skin him
alive."

The man seized his hand and wrung it.

"But first I must be in Charlestown," said my father.

The next morning we sold our pelts. And though the mare was tired,
we pushed southward, I behind the saddle. I had much to think about,
wondering what was to become of me while my father went to skin Cameron.
I had not the least doubt that he would do it. The world is a storybook
to a lad of nine, and the thought of Charlestown filled me with a
delight unspeakable. Perchance he would leave me in Charlestown.

At nightfall we came into a settlement called the Waxhaws. And there
being no tavern there, and the mare being very jaded and the roads
heavy, we cast about for a place to sleep. The sunlight slanting over
the pine forest glistened on the pools in the wet fields. And it so
chanced that splashing across these, swinging a milk-pail over his head,
shouting at the top of his voice, was a red-headed lad of my own age. My
father hailed him, and he came running towards us, still shouting, and
vaulted the rails. He stood before us, eying me with a most mischievous
look in his blue eyes, and dabbling in the red mud with his toes. I
remember I thought him a queer-looking boy. He was lanky, and he had a
very long face under his tousled hair.

My father asked him where he could spend the night.

"Wal," said the boy, "I reckon Uncle Crawford might take you in. And
again he mightn't."

He ran ahead, still swinging the pail. And we, following, came at length
to a comfortable-looking farmhouse. As we