His heart grew lighter when he saw the sunshine showing golden green through the leafy screen that bordered the hunter’s little clearing. He found Job leaning on his hoe in his patch of corn, looking wistfully on the creek, where the fish were breaking the surface among the weeds that marked the expanse of marsh with tender green, and where the sinuous course of the channel was defined by purple lines of lily pads. The message was received with a show of vexation, and the old man exclaimed: “Plague on ’em all with their pitches and surveyin’ and squabblin’. Why can’t folks let the woods alone? There’s room enough in the settlements for sech quarrels without comin’ here to disturb God’s peace with bickerin’s over these acres o’ desart. I thought I’d got done wi’ wars and fightin’s, exceptin’ with varmints, when the Frenchers and Injins was whipped. But I guess there won’t never be no peace on airth and good will to men for all it’s ben preached nigh onto eighteen hundred years. Plague on your Hampshire Grants and your York Grants, the hul bilin’! Wal, if it must come it must, and I’ll be skelped if I’ll see Yorkers a runnin’ over my own Yankee kin. Yorkers is next to Reg’lars for toppin’ ways. I never could abear ’em.” While he spoke he twirled Nathan’s hemlock sprig between his fingers and now set it carefully in the band of his hat and led the way to his cabin. “And Ethan Allen’s in these betterments? Well, them Yorkers’ll wish they’d stayed to home. He’s hard-handed, is Ethan.” The two were now in the cabin, and Job set forth a cold johnny-cake and some jerked venison that Nathan needed no urging to partake of. “’Tain’t your mother’s cookin’, but it’s better’n nothin’,” Job said, as between mouthfuls he counted out a dozen bullets from a pouch and put them in his pocket. Then he held up his powder horn toward the light after giving it a shake, and, being satisfied of its contents, slung it over his shoulder. Their hunger being satisfied, he took the long smooth-bore from its hooks, examined the flint, and, nodding to Nathan to follow, went down to his canoe, that lay bottom up on the bank. “It’s quicker goin’ by water’n by land,” said Job, as he set the canoe afloat and stepped into it, while Nathan took his place forward. Impelled by the two paddles, the light craft went swiftly gliding down the creek, and then northward, skirting the wooded shore of the lake. CHAPTER VI—THE YORKERS