"Ye'll live to rue this day, Alec Trimble," cried the man. "Ye may think
ye're too fine for the likes of us, but there's them in the settlement
that knows about ye."

With that he flung himself on his horse, and rode away. But the next
time I went to the Cross-Roads the woman drove me away with curses, and
called me an aristocrat. Wearily I tramped back the dozen miles up the
creek, beside the mare, carrying my pelts with me; stumbling on the
stones, and scratched by the dry briers. For it was autumn, the woods
all red and yellow against the green of the pines. I sat down beside the
old beaver dam to gather courage to tell my father. But he only smiled
bitterly when he heard it. Nor would he tell me what the word ARISTOCRAT
meant.

That winter we spent without bacon, and our salt gave out at Christmas.
It was at this season, if I remember rightly, that we had another
visitor. He arrived about nightfall one gray day, his horse jaded and
cut, and he was dressed all in wool, with a great coat wrapped about him,
and high boots. This made me stare at him. When my father drew back the
bolt of the door he, too, stared and fell back a step.

"Come in," said he.

"D'ye ken me, Alec?" said the man.

He was a tall, spare man like my father, a Scotchman, but his hair was in
a cue.

"Come in, Duncan," said my father, quietly. "Davy, run out for wood."