CHAPTER V
KASHAQUA
Esther did not find the blue beads; and when her father came for her she had not said a word to Faith about them.
Mr. Eldridge found his little daughter fully recovered from her illness, and in better health than when she came to the Wilderness. When she said good-bye Faith was really sorry to have her go, but she wondered a little that Esther made no mention of the beads, for Esther had been a model visitor since her illness. She had told Mrs. Carew the full story of the attempt to make maple candy, which the bear had interrupted, and she had claimed the pumpkin-shell work-box with evident delight. All these things had made Faith confident that Esther would return the beads before starting for home, and she was sadly disappointed to have Esther depart without a word about them.
Esther had asked Mrs. Carew if Faith might not go to Brandon, and so Mrs. Carew had told the little girls of the plan for Faith to go to her Aunt Priscilla in Ticonderoga for the winter and attend school there.
“Oh! But that’s New York. Why, the ‘Yorkers’ want to take all the Wilderness. I shouldn’t want to go to school with ‘Yorkers,’” Esther had responded, a little scornfully.
For she had often heard her father and his friends talk of the attempts made by the English officials of New York to drive the settlers on the New Hampshire Grants from their homes.
“’Tis not the people of New York who would do us harm,” Mrs. Carew had answered. “And Faith will make friends, I hope, with many of her schoolmates.”
It was a beautiful October morning when Esther, seated in front of her father on the big gray horse, with the pumpkin-shell work-box wrapped in a safe bundle swinging from the front of the saddle, started for Brandon. Their way for most of the journey led over a rough trail. They would pass near the homes of many settlers, then over the lower slopes of Mooselamoo Mountain, and skirt Lake Dunmore, and would then find themselves on a smoother road for the remainder of their journey.