“Oh, I am glad to get this, and see, it is longer’n I be yet. But I’m growing, for I measured when Toombs put this up loft so’t he could hang his gun on the hooks over the fireplace. See, I can hold it at arm’s length long enough to see to shoot,” and he stretched out the long-barrelled gun with pride. “Toombs was out a burnin’ log heaps,” Job went on. “She says he’s dretful narvous an’ jumps at every sound. I ruther guess he’s gittin’ his pay as he goes along, my boy.” In preparation for the fall trapping, which was the ranger’s chief dependence, the two, accompanied by Gabriel, made long ranges through the forest, marking their line by blazed trees, to build deadfalls for martens on the upland and for mink along the brook and larger streams, and larger traps for martens, otters, fisher, and beaver, and when the leaves began to fall they daily gathered their furry harvest. Day after day, too, the woods rang with Gabe’s deep, melodious voice as he drove the deer to water. Many an adventure on lake or in forest spiced the half wild life, and the loving trust of the old man so sweetened it that time glided swiftly past. Many a lesson of woodcraft the boy also learned, as well as the priceless one of love and charity to all created things, if Indians and Toombs were excepted. Perhaps, in time, their turn for forbearance would come. One day late in the fall Nathan ventured to the Fort, as much to visit the garrison boys, for whose companionship he often longed in his isolation, as to carry some fine partridges to the commandant’s lady. He had shot them himself with his father’s gun, in the use of which he was becoming expert. “Whativer has coom o’ your redheaded stepfather? He didn’t coom here sin he coom marryin’ your mother,” said one of the English boys. After this information, visits to the Fort were more frequent, since there was no fear of meeting Toombs. The sentinel, who, with his musket shouldered high above his left hip and his clubbed queue bobbing in unison to his slow, measured steps, always paced before the gate, made but a show of challenging him, and Nathan was almost as free as the inmates to every part of the Fort, excepting the officers’ quarters and the vigilantly guarded magazine. The drill and parade of the soldiers, in their spotless scarlet uniforms and shining arms, though there were less than fifty, rank and file, seemed a grand martial display, and he was always thrilled with the stirring notes of drum and fife. Occasionally he met the commandant’s wife walking on the parapet, so refined and different from the toil-worn women he had been accustomed to see, that she seemed a being of another world.