an hour at a time, staring ahead, and then I knew she was thinking of
that Tom McChesney. She would wake from those reveries with a laugh, and
give me a push to send me rolling down a bank.

"What's the matter, Davy? You look as solemn as a wood-owl. What a
little wiseacre you be!"

Once I retorted, "You were thinking of that Tom McChesney."

"Ay, that she was, I'll warrant," snapped her grandfather.

Polly Ann replied, with a merry peal of laughter, "You are both jealous
of Tom--both of you. But, Davy, when you see him you'll love him as much
as I do."

"I'll not," I said sturdily.

"He's a man to look upon--"

"He's a rip-roarer," old man Ripley put in. "Ye're daft about him."

"That I am," said Polly, flushing and subsiding; "but he'll not know it."

As we rose into the more rugged country we passed more than one charred
cabin that told its silent story of Indian massacre. Only on the
scattered hill farms women and boys and old men were working in the
fields, all save the scalawags having gone to join Rutherford. There
were plenty of these around the taverns to make eyes at Polly Ann and
open love to her, had she allowed them; but she treated them in return to
such scathing tirades that they were glad to desist--all but one. He