He looked at me intently, some curiosity apparent in his eyes, as he deliberately drew a folded paper from his belt.

“No?  Be ye the lad what downed Bud Eberly at the meetin’ over on the Cow-skin las’ spring?” he questioned, with faintly aroused interest.

I blushed like a school-girl, for this unexpected reference was not wholly to my liking, though the man’s intentions were evidently most kind.

“He bullied me until I could take no more,” I answered, doubtfully; “yet I hurt him more seriously than I meant.”

He laughed at the trace of apology in my words.

“Lord!” he ejaculated, “don’t ever let that worry ye, boy.  The hull settlement is mighty glad ‘twas done.  Old Hawkins bin on the p’int o’ doin’ it himself a dozen o’ times.  Told me so.  Ye ’re quite a lad, ain’t ye?  Weigh all o’ hundred an’ seventy, I ‘ll bet; an’ strong as an ox.  How old be ye, anyhow?”

“Twenty,” I answered, not a little mollified by his manner.  “You must live near here, then?”

“Wal, no, but been sorter neighbor o’ yourn fer a month er so back; stoppin’ up at Hawkins’s shebang, at the ford, on the Military Road, visitin’; but guess I never met up with none o’ your folks afore.  My name ‘s Burns, Ol’ Tom Burns, late o’ Connecticut.  A sojer from out West left this yere letter fer yer father at Hawkins’s place more nor a week ago.  Said as how it was mighty important; but blamed if this was n’t the fust chance he ’s hed to git it over yere sence.  I told him I ’d fetch it, as it was n’t more nor a dozen miles er so outer my way.”

He held out a square paper packet; and while I turned it over curiously in my hand,—­the first letter I had ever seen,—­he took some loose tobacco from an outside pocket and proceeded leisurely to fill his pipe.

My mother rolled my father’s chair forward into the open doorway, and stood close behind him, as was her custom, one arm resting lightly upon the quaintly carved chair-back.

“What is it, John?” she questioned gently.  Instantly aroused by her voice, I crossed quickly over and placed the packet in my father’s thin hands.  He turned it over twice before he opened it, looking at the odd seal, and reading the superscription carefully aloud, as if fearful there might be some mistake: 

  “Major David Wayland,
    Along the Upper Maumee. 
      Leave at Hawkins Ford
        on Military Road.” 
          “Important.”

I can see him yet as he read it, slowly feeling his way through the rude, uneven writing, with my mother leaning over his shoulder and helping him, her rosy cheeks and dark tresses making strange contrast beside his pain-racked features and iron-gray hair.

“Read it aloud, Mary,” he said at last.  “I shall understand it better.  ’T is from Roger Matherson, of whom you have heard me speak.”

My mother was a good scholar, and she read clearly, only hesitating now and, then over some ill-written or misspelled word.