The pack train upon which the little community depended for needed supplies had been long overdue, and at Caleb's side as he stood in front of his house looking anxiously east was his daughter Dorothy, grown tall and pliantly straight as a lifted lance. Her dark eyes and heavy hair, the poise of her head, her gracious sweetness and gentle courage were, to her father, all powerful reminders of the woman whom he had loved first and last--this girl's mother. For a moment he turned away his head. "Some day," he said, abruptly, "if Providence permits it, I purpose to set a fitting stone here at her head." "Meanwhile--if we can't raise a stone," the girl's voice came soft and vibrant, "we can do something else. We can plant a tree." "A tree!" exclaimed the man, almost irritably. "It sometimes seems to me that we are being strangled to death by trees! They conceal our enemies--they choke us under their blankets of wet and shadow." But Dorothy shook her head in resolute dissent. "Those are just trees of the forest," she said, whimsically reverting to the old class distinction. "This will be a manor-house tree planted and tended by loving hands. It will throw shade over a sacred spot." Her eyes began to glow with the growth of her conception. "Don't you remember how dearly Mother loved the great walnut tree that shaded the veranda at home? She would sit gazing out over the river, then up into its branches--dreaming happy things. She used to tell me that she found my fairy stories there among its leaves--and there was always a smile on her lips then." The spring was abundantly young and where the distances lengthened they lay in violet dreams. "Don't you remember?" repeated the girl, but Caleb Parish looked suddenly away. His ear had caught a distant sound of tinkling pony bells drifting down wind and he said devoutly, "Thank God, the pack train is coming." It was an hour later when the loaded horses came into view herded by fagged woodsmen and piloted by Peter Doane, who strode silently, tirelessly, at their head. But with Peter walked another young man of different stamp--a young man who had never been here before. Like his fellows he wore the backwoodsman's garb, but unlike them his tan was of newer wind-burning. Unlike them, too, he bowed with a ceremony foreign to the wilderness and swept his coonskin cap clear of his head. "This man," announced Peter, brusquely, "gives the name of Kenneth Thornton and hears a message for Captain Parish!" The young stranger smiled, and his engaging face was quickened with the flash of white teeth. A dark lock of hair fell over his forehead and his firm chin was deeply cleft. "I have the honour of bearing a letter from your brother, Sir," he said, "and one from General Washington himself."