The horseman sprang from his saddle. "Fetch a blanket for my horse, will you?" said he. The boy who lived there ran indoors to get a covering. Meantime the rider strode up to Dutton's door and flung it open. He walked up to the group of men about the stove, announcing his news briefly. At his heels came Sam and Jack, and back of them came the boy from the log house opposite. II They started from Dutton's next morning, a troop of a dozen men and three boys, bound for Beaver Falls. "Big Bill" left his store in charge of his wife, and took command of the troop. They were all hardy and strong, and they covered the twenty miles to Beaver Falls by the middle of the afternoon. Here there stood a sawmill on the river, with a score of log houses, and farms scattered through the neighborhood. The place looked perfectly quiet as the fifteen Green Mountain Boys trooped up to it. But they soon found there was plenty of excitement in the mill. There were gathered most of the men of the Falls, and they were very glad to see the reinforcements. "Yorkers been found prowling round in the woods!" "Surveyors been caught in the act of staking claims!" "Jim Murdock found a paper stuck on his door, saying we'd better get out peaceful-like, and let the lawful owners have their land!" Such were some of the items of information given to Dutton's band. "Let 'em come!" exclaimed Snyder, slapping his hand round the muzzle of his gun. "This is the law of the land we'll read to them!" After a time Jack and Sam, having heard all there was to hear, struck out on a line of their own. They followed the bank of the river until they came to woods, and then skirted the forest southward. This brought them at length to a wide trail with frozen wheel ruts. Down this road they went, passing occasional cabins, until they came to a crossroad where they found a man looking perplexedly about him, as if undecided which road to take. "Where's Farmer Robins' place?" he asked. "The place that used to belong to Elijah Robins." "We don't know," said Jack. "We're strangers here." "There's a maple grove back of it," said the stranger, "that's all I know about it. I was told to stick to this road, but they didn't say nothing about any forks in it." "This goes to Beaver Falls," said Sam, pointing to the one they had taken, "and that," he added, indicating the crossroad to the right of him, "would take you through thick woods to the river." "I don't reckon it's either o' those roads then," said the man, and, bobbing his head at Sam, he stalked off to the left. The two boys watched until the man was almost hidden by the trees. Then Jack turned to Sam. "You don't want to tell all you know to strangers," he said. "Make the other man tell you what he's up to first." Sam's round face, not nearly so shrewd as the older boy's, looked perplexed. "Why shouldn't I tell him about those other roads?" he asked.