"Father was with us when we came, last year. He was killed by the murdering savage sneaks nearly two months ago." "Why did you hold on here?" the stranger asked, eying me curiously. "Surely the clearin' isn't so far along that it pays to risk your life for it." "Mother would have packed off; but I couldn't leave." "Why?" "It's a poor kind of a son who won't at least try to wipe off such a score, and I'll hold on here till those who killed the poor old man have found out who I am!" Tears of mingled rage, grief, and helplessness came into my eyes as I spoke thus hotly, and I wheeled around quickly lest this stranger, seeing them, should set me down for a younger lad than I really was. "It's quite a job you've shouldered," he said after a pause. "The Injuns nearabout here ain't to be caught nappin' every hour in the day, and the chances are your mother may find herself alone on the clearin' before you have made any great headway in settlin' the score." "Because you crept up on me, there is no reason why the red snakes can do the same thing!" I cried angrily, whereupon he nodded gravely as if agreeing with me, after which he asked: "How old are you?" "Must a fellow have seen so many years more or less before he can do the work of a man?" I demanded, giving proof by my petulance that I was yet little more than a child. "It was not with anything of the kind in my mind that I asked the question. Perhaps I wondered if you'd had the experience that'll be needed before your work is done." "I'm just turned sixteen," I replied, thoroughly ashamed of having displayed an ill-temper. "Where did you come from?" "Pennsylvania." "Was your father a Tory?" he asked. "Indeed he wasn't!" and now I grew hot again. "He believed we might better our condition by pushing into the wilderness, for when a man's land is overrun by two armies, as ours had been, farming is a poor trade." Then he questioned me yet more closely until I had come to an end of my short story, which began with the day we set out from the colony founded by William Penn, and ended with that hour when I came across my poor father's mangled body scarce half a mile from our clearing, where the beasts in human form had tortured him. All this I told the stranger as if he had been, an old friend, for there was something, in his voice and manner which won my heart at once, and when the sad tale was ended I came to understand he had not questioned me idly.