travellers, was welcomed by certain old familiar faces at Harrodstown,
and pressed on. I have a vivid recollection of a beloved, vigorous
figure swooping out of a cabin door and scattering a brood of children
right and left. "Polly Ann!" I said, and she halted, trembling.

"Tom," she cried, "Tom, it's Davy come back," and Tom himself flew out
of the door, ramrod in one hand and rifle in the other. Never shall I
forget them as they stood there, he grinning with sheer joy as of yore,
and she, with her hair flying and her blue gown snapping in the wind,
in a tremor between tears and laughter. I leaped to the ground, and
she hugged me in her arms as though I had been a child, calling my name
again and again, and little Tom pulling at the skirts of my coat. I
caught the youngster by the collar.

"Polly Ann," said I, "he's grown to what I was when you picked me up, a
foundling."

"And now it's little Davy no more," she answered, swept me a courtesy,
and added, with a little quiver in her voice, "ye are a gentleman now."

"My heart is still where it was," said I.

"Ay, ay," said Tom, "I'm sure o' that, Davy."

I was with them a fortnight in the familiar cabin, and then I took up
my journey northward, heavy at leaving again, but promising to see
them from time to time. For Tom was often at the Falls when he went
a-scouting into the Illinois country. It was, as of old, Polly Ann who
ran the mill and was the real bread-winner of the family.

Louisville was even then bursting with importance, and as I rode into
it, one bright November day, I remembered the wilderness I had seen
here not ten years gone when I had marched hither with Captain Harrod's
company to join Clark on the island. It was even then a thriving little
town of log and clapboard houses and schools and churches, and wise men
were saying of it--what Colonel Clark had long ago predicted--that it
would become the first city of commercial importance in the district of
Kentucky.

I do not mean to give you an account of my struggles that winter
to obtain a foothold in the law. The time was a heyday for young
barristers, and troubles in those early days grew as plentifully in
Kentucky as corn. In short, I got a practice, for Colonel Clark was
here to help me, and, thanks to the men who had gone to Kaskaskia and
Vincennes, I had a fairly large acquaintance in Kentucky. I hired rooms
behind Mr. Crede's store, which was famed for the glass windows which
had been fet