"You damned Dutchmen be all Tories, and worse," he cried; "you stay here
and till your farms while our boys are off in the hill towns fighting
Cherokees. I wish the devils had every one of your fat sculps. Polly
Ann, water the nags."

Hans replied to this sally with great vigor, lapsing into Dutch. Polly
Ann led the scrawny ponies to the trough, but her eyes snapped with
merriment as she listened. She was a wonderfully comely lass, despite
her loose cotton gown and poke-bonnet and the shoepacks on her feet. She
had blue eyes, the whitest, strongest of teeth, and the rosiest of faces.

"Gran'pa hates a Dutchman wuss'n pizen," she said to me. "So do I.
We've all been burned out and sculped up river--and they never give us so
much as a man or a measure of corn."

I helped her feed the animals, and tether them, and loose their bells for
the night, and carry the packs under cover.

"All the boys is gone to join Rutherford and lam the Indians," she
continued, "so Gran'pa and I had to go to the settlements. There wahn't
any one else. What's your name?" she demanded suddenly.

I told her.

She sat down on a log at the corner of the house, and pulled me down
beside her.

"And whar be you from?"