Thus far our narrative has covered the childhood of our subject up to the ninth year of his age. At this juncture occurred an event that cast the first real shadow over his youthful pathway. It was the death of his father, the tragic nature of which and the subsequent effect it was to have upon his career, made the shadow all the deeper and more significant. Charles Newgent went with a company consisting of sixty adventurous spirits, upon an expedition to the West, the real object of which seems to be somewhat indefinite. The restless and venturesome spirit of the pioneer, a curious desire to penetrate the mysteries of the great western world, the dream of untold treasures that nature had in store for those who dared to conquer the dragons that guarded them—all may have figured in this ill-fated enterprise. However that may have been, while crossing the western plains the company was attacked and massacred by a band of hostile Indians. As in the calamities that befell Job’s household, one of the number was left to tell the story. This one was supposed by the savages to have shared the fate of all the rest, being left on the field for dead; but it so happened that in his case the weapon of death did not do complete work. He was picked up the next day by a party of hunters to whom he was able to give a vague account of the preceding day’s terrible tragedy. After the father’s death, the mother with her nine children moved back to their former home in Parke County. Life then took on a sterner aspect for the boy. His tender hands must perform their part in the maintenance of the family. Accordingly he hired out to Mr. Jesse Maddox, a neighboring farmer. His wages the first year were to be a pair of shoes, ten bushels of corn, and the privilege of attending the district school. The market price of corn was ten cents per bushel. Even at this modest stipend he admits that he made money, “though not very much.” While in after years of fruitful labors in the ministry he often remarked that the question that most perplexed him was how to earn what he received, it is not probable that the question at this time had assumed very serious proportions. The most important stipulation in the contract was the privilege of attending school. But even this is subject to shrinkage when we recall that the school system of Indiana was then in its first stage of development. It afforded no royal path to learning, and the common thoroughfare was neither smooth nor flowery. We would scarcely expect to find in the schoolroom comforts that the home itself was a stranger to. Strikingly suggestive of the interior aspect of those primitive seats of learning are the lines from Whittier’s “In School Days”: “Within, the master’s desk is seen, Deep scarred by raps official; The battered seats, the warping floor, The jack knife’s carved initial.