oved me father as I do thim."

I would have given kingdoms in those days to have been seventeen and
James Ray. When he was in the fort I dogged his footsteps, and listened
with a painful yearning to the stories of his escapes from the roving
bands. And as many a character is watered in its growth by hero-worship,
so my own grew firmer in the contemplation of Ray's resourcefulness. My
strange life had far removed me from lads of my own age, and he took a
fancy to me, perhaps because of the very persistence of my devotion to
him. I cleaned his gun, filled his powder flask, and ran to do his every
bidding.

I used in the hot summer days to lie under the elm tree and listen to the
settlers' talk about a man named Henderson, who had bought a great part
of Kentucky from the Indians, and had gone out with Boone to found
Boonesboro some two years before. They spoke of much that I did not
understand concerning the discountenance by Virginia of these claims,
speculating as to whether Henderson's grants were good. For some of them
held these grants, and others Virginia grants--a fruitful source of
quarrel between them. Some spoke, too, of Washington and his ragged
soldiers going up and down the old colonies and fighting for a freedom
which there seemed little chance of getting. But their anger seemed to
blaze most fiercely when they spoke of a mysterious British general named
Hamilton, whom they called "the ha'r buyer," and who from his stronghold
in the north country across the great Ohio sent down these hordes of
savages to harry us. I learned to hate Hamilton with the rest, and
pictured him with the visage of a fiend. We laid at his door every
outrage that had happened at the three stations, and put upon him the
blood of those who had been carried off to torture in the Indian villages
of the northern forests. And when--amidst great excitement--a spent
runner would arrive from Boonesboro or St. Asaph's and beg Mr. Clark for
a squad, it was commonly with the first breath that came into his body
that he cursed Hamilton.

So the summer wore away, while we lived from hand to mouth on such scanty
fare as the two of them shot and what we could venture to gather in the
unkempt fields near the gates. A winter of famine lurked ahead, and men
were goaded near to madness at the thought of clearings made and corn
planted in the spring within reach of their hands, as it were, and they
might not harvest it. At length, when a fortnight had p