Early that afternoon Peter's father took him home to relieve the anxiety he knew the boy's mother must be feeling. When Tom returned that night with his newly-earned shillings, he passed half of them over to Peter. "There, Pete, put them aside for college. Harvard will want such a man as you will make." Peter went to bed that night, happy with the new thought that he, himself, might some day go to college. LITTLE JANE'S GENTIANS. "Have you never seen a fringed gentian?" asked little blue-eyed Jane. "If you will go down that path with me, I'll show you where they grow." Benjamin was about to follow, when his father reined in his horse at the gate and called, "Come, Ben, we must start for home!" "Never mind," whispered little Jane, "I'll bring one to you at the meeting-house on the Sabbath." John Cutts lifted his boy to the horse's back, and with the bag of meal behind the saddle they started homeward over beaten paths through the woods to the clearing, some two miles from the settlement. This happened as long ago as 1671, when the fire on the hearth was the only kind used. Benjamin was glad to get close to it this cold fall night, as he listened to his father's account of the many wolves shot that week, whose heads, Benjamin knew, would be hung on the meeting-house door until the captors received their bounty. On Sunday morning John Cutts examined his musket closely, for he dared not start to meeting without it. Indians as well as wolves were feared. His wife sat on the horse behind him, and Benjamin rode before. Traveling over the narrow paths, they passed but few people on their way. Sunday was a day of fear for Benjamin, for outside the church door was built a large wooden cage which held the stocks, while a pillory was constructed on top, both of which were to hold in most uncomfortable positions those who disturbed the meeting. Inside the church his mother sat on one side, his father on the other. Benjamin was always left at the back with a row of boys under the piercing eye of Nicholas Bond, the tything man, who kept strict order with his rod and an occasional nod to the cage outside. On this particular morning when Benjamin dropped into his seat at the end of the row and near the door, he thought seriously of the whispered word he had overheard outside. "Little Jane is lost. There are several searching parties out!" "This is the morning," thought Benjamin, "that little Jane was going to bring me the gentians. I wonder if anyone would think of searching that path for her!" He glanced at the unusual number of wolves' heads hung on the door and thought of those still living in the woods. The guns stacked by the doorway suggested lurking Indians. His fear for little Jane's safety so increased that he became restless and soon received a sharp rap on the shins from the tything man.