"Do help him if you can, Mr. Blanchard. I'm sure if he wants to think about or do something besides killing Indians, and risking his life on rafts, I do hope you'll gratify and encourage him, if it's only for the sake of his mother, and tell him something to pacify him." "Well, Sammy, if I can't make you a wheel nor tell how to use it, there's one thing I can do: I can show you how to mould brick, and you can have a brick-yard and a kiln, and make your mother a brick oven that will be worth three times as much to her as the bean-pot; and she can bake beans, bread, and meat in it." "I don't want to make no brick oven. I wouldn't give a chestnut-burr for a thousand brick ovens. I want to do what the potters do." "Well, I'll tell you all about how the potters work their clay; and then you can make a good pot or milk-pan on a mould as you do now, and I'll make moulds for you. I'll keep thinking about a wheel; and perhaps we may have to go to Baltimore or Lancaster for salt or powder, and can get some iron: then I'll make a wheel; or perhaps I shall think of some way to make it without iron." In this manner Mr. Seth continued to pacify Sammy, who, wiping up his tears, got up in his benefactor's lap, and wanted to know when he would show him how to fix the clay. Mr. Seth replied, "To-morrow morning," well knowing he should have no peace till it was done. Sammy then wanted to know when he would tell him about the glaze; to which he answered that it was no use to think about that till the Indian war was over, as neither lead nor salt could be spared for the purpose, and if the clay was well worked, and the articles well baked, they would do good service without any glaze. Harry, Alex, and Enoch now took their rifles, and went home with the children; but Mrs. Sumerford persuaded Mr. Blanchard to tarry all night. "What do you think has got into this boy, Mr. Blanchard?" said the mother, after Sammy had gone to bed, "that he should set out all at once in such a fury to make things of clay?" "Well, Mrs. Sumerford, almost everybody in this world has a turn for some one thing more than another; and you know that all your boys have a turn for handling tools: Elick and Enoch have, though not so much as Harry." "That's true, Mr. Blanchard; and they take it from their father: he could make almost anything; he would make a handsome plate out of an ash-whorl; and he made me a churn that he dug out of a round log, and swelled the bottom in, then put hoops on; it was the handsomest you ever did see."