buckskin leggins, softened her ire
completely, and made her, from that time forward, the stanch friend
and ally of the English.

Travelling on a few miles further, they came to Mr. Gist's house, on
the banks of the Monongahela, where Washington bought a horse to bear
him to his journey's end, and parted with his trusty guide. He was now
entirely alone; and a wide stretch of woods and mountains, swamps and
frozen streams, still lay between him and the cheerful homes to whose
comforts he had been so long a stranger. Now and then, the loneliness
of the way would be for a moment enlivened by the sight of some sturdy
backwoodsman, axe or rifle on shoulder, pushing westward, with his
wife and children and dogs and household trumpery, to find a home in
some still more distant part of the wilderness. It was midwinter,
when, after having been absent eleven weeks on his perilous mission,
our young Virginian, looking more like a wild Indian than the civil
and Christian gentleman that he really was, rode into the town of
Williamsburg, nor halted until he had alighted and hitched his horse
in front of the governor's house.

XII.

WASHINGTON'S FIRST BATTLE.

Upon his arrival, Major Washington hastened at once to lay before Gov.
Dinwiddie, and the Virginia Legislature then in session, the French
general's letter, and the journal he had kept during the expedition.

In his letter, the French general spoke in high and flattering terms
of the character and talents of young Washington; but, in language
most decided and unmistakable, refused to withdraw his troops from the
disputed territory, or cease building forts therein, as had been
demanded of him, unless so ordered by his royal master, the King of
France, to whose wishes only he owed respect and obedience. From the
tenor of this letter, it was plainly enough to be seen (what might, in
fact, have been seen before), that the French were not in the least
inclined to give up, at the mere asking, all that they had been at so
much pains and expense at gaining. It therefore followed, that as the
title to this bit of forest land could not be written with the pen, on
fair paper, in letters of Christian ink, it must needs be written with
the sword, on the fair earth, in letters of Christian blood. By this,
the little folks are to understand their Uncle Juvinell to mean that
war alone could settle the question between them. And this
unreasonable behavior, on the part of two great n