Bible lay wide open upon his knee; yet his eyes were resting upon the
dark green of the woods that skirted our clearing. I wondered, as I
quaffed the cool sweet water at the spring, if he was dreaming again of
those old days when he had been a man among men. How distinct in each
detail the memory of it remains! The blue sky held but one fleecy
white cloud in all its wide arch; it seemed as if the curling film of
smoke rising from our chimney had but gathered there and hung suspended
to render the azure more pronounced. A robin peeked impudently at me
from an oak limb, and a roguish gray squirrel chattered along the low
ridge-pole, with seeming willingness to make friends, until Rover,
suddenly spying me, sprang hastily around the comer of the house to
lick my hand, with glad barkings and a frantic effort to wave the stub
of his poor old tail. It was such a homely, quiet scene, there in the
heart of the backwoods, one I had known unchanged so long, that I
little dreamed it was soon to witness the turning over of a page of
destiny in my life, that almost from that hour I was to sever every
relation of the past, and be sent forth to buffet with the rough world
alone.

There were no roads, in those days, along that valley of the upper
Maumee,--merely faint bridle-paths, following ancient Indian trails
through dense woods or across narrow strips of prairie land; yet as I
hung the gourd back on its wooden peg, and lifted my eyes carelessly to
the northward, I saw a horseman riding slowly toward the house along
the river bank. There were flying rumors of coming Indian outbreaks
along the fringe of border settlements; but my young eyes were keen,
and after the first quick thrill of suspicion I knew the approaching
stranger to be of white blood, although his apparel was scarcely less
uncivilized than that of the savage. Yet so unusual were visitors,
that I grasped a gun from its pegs in the kitchen, and called warningly