Except for the woollen jerkin, all the clothing was made of a stout cloth that in later days came to be known as jeans. It was wear-resisting to a remarkable degree, which of course proved to be a blessing all around, for new clothes in the families of most pioneers must always be an event never to be forgotten in the lives of the children. Moccasins usually covered the feet, shoes being expensive luxuries which few among the settlers could afford. To tan a deerskin, and fashion a pair of moccasins, was an accomplishment quickly learned from the Indians. NOTE 4 (PAGE 55) Perhaps to the boy of to-day the Armstrong home would have appeared a very cheerless place. The sleeping-places in the loft were reached by means of a pair of steep stairs that when not in use could be drawn up to the board ceiling, thus affording more room below. Over in one corner stood the spinning-wheel which was responsible for so many of Bob and Sandy's comforts in the way of clothes. In another quarter was the loom at which the good woman of the house was wont to fashion the stout cloth from which the outer garments of both boys, as well as Mr. Armstrong himself, were made. Under the small window stood the locker in which the housewife kept what small remnant of former luxuries in the way of linen remained to her from the stores in the comfortable home in Richmond that had been theirs before trouble found them out. The light from the open windows fell upon the bunches of herbs and dried vegetables that hung from the low rafters overhead, and upon the steaming pot that hung over the blaze in the wide-throated fireplace. NOTE 5 (PAGE 112) Daniel Boone at this time was still a comparatively young man; but already his intrepid soul had drank deeply of the cup of adventure; and he felt within him the yearning of a true explorer. He had, some years before, given up his comfortable home in the Yadkin valley, away back in North Carolina, because the country there was becoming "too thickly settled" to please his ideas of comfort. When it became necessary to mark the boundaries of his fields, and he could actually see the smoke of another cabin not over half a mile away, he resolved to put into action the designs for a westward move which in secret he had long been cherishing. His faithful wife gave herself heart and soul to his ambition to settle in that mysterious Golden West that seemed to be beckoning Boone on. They made a first step by crossing the Cumberland Mountains, and starting a new home to the west of this range. But Boone had already been further in Kentucky, and there was that in the rich plains of the interior to draw him like a magnet. When one has seen the region long known as the "Blue Grass country," around Lexington, and realized what a paradise on earth it has ever been, it is not so hard to understand why Daniel Boone refused to content himself with a home in a safer locality, less favored by Nature.