grapevine. Wilt go along amongst our rangers yonder, and earn a pistole
and undying fame?"

The woodsman looked from the knot of gentlemen to the troop of hardy
rangers, who, with a dozen ebony servants and four Meherrin Indians, made
up the company. Under charge of the slaves were a number of packhorses.
Thrown across one was a noble deer; a second bore a brace of wild turkeys
and a two-year-old bear, fat and tender; a third had a legion of pots and
pans for the cooking of the woodland cheer; while the burden of several
others promised heart's content of good liquor. From the entire troop
breathed a most enticing air of gay daring and good-fellowship. The
gentlemen were young and of cheerful countenances; the rangers in the rear
sat their horses and whistled to the woodpeckers in the sugar-trees; the
negroes grinned broadly; even the Indians appeared a shade less saturnine
than usual. The golden sunshine poured upon them all, and the blue
mountains that no Englishman had ever passed seemed for the moment as soft
and yielding as the cloud that slept along their summits. And no man knew
what might be just beyond the mountains: Frenchmen, certainly, and the
great lakes and the South Sea: but, besides these, might there not be
gold, glittering stones, new birds and beasts and plants, strange secrets
of the hills? It was only westward-ho! for a week or two, with good
company and good drink--

The woodsman shifted from one foot to the other, but his wife, who had now
crossed the grass to his side, had no doubts.

"You'll not go, William!" she cried. "Remember the smoke that you saw
yesterday from the hilltop! If the Northern Indians are on the warpath
against the Southern, and are passing between us and the mountains, there
may be straying bands. I'll not let you go!"