"Tell me when I have it right. I am not quite sure, though I have looked after many a camp fire. And now I am here to ease you up somewhat, and look out for you. Your father has been very good through these troublous times, and I will see that he need not be ashamed of his son."
"Oh," she cried with deep emotion, "you make me very happy. So much of our lives are yet to come."
There followed several pleasant days. The snow ran off and another came and vanished.
There was little doing. Some people had looms in their houses and were weaving goods of various rather common kinds and many of the women were kept busy spinning thread and woolen yarns for cloth. Money was scarce, most of the trade was carried on by barter.
"It has the making of a magnificent city," Bernard Carrick said, surveying its many fine points. "From here you will go straight over to the Mississippi. Some day we shall have both sides. What have the French been about to let such a splendid opportunity slip through their hands."
"Don't stir up a hornet's nest at home," counseled the elder Carrick.
"Oh, you mean great-grandfather! He sees the mistakes and shortsightedness, and while he would have been proud enough to live here under French rule, he understands some aspects at the old home better than we, the extravagance of the Court, the corruption of society, and," laughing, "he is hardly as hot for France as you are for England. After all, what so much has been done for you or Scotland or Ireland for that matter?"
"This will be fought all over again. You will see. The country will be broken up into little provinces. Yankee and Virginian will never agree; Catholic and Puritan are bound to fight each other."
"Hardly! They fought together for the great cause and they'll hardly turn their swords on each other. I've been from New York to Yorktown. And now the great work is for every man to improve his own holding, his own town."
Pittsburg then had enjoyed or hated successive rulers. Great Britain, then France, Great Britain again, Virginia and Pennsylvania. It had been a strategic point worth holding, but no one then had dreamed of its later renown.