To her surprise, she found a boy standing outside. His hand which he had raised to knock with went like a flash to his cap. He pulled it off and stood, bareheaded, as he bowed like a young cavalier and smiled up at her. He was about Eli’s age, she thought, between fifteen and sixteen, but a different sort of lad from her sturdy son. His long, pale face had the lines of an aristocrat. Even his slender fingers showed his gentle heritage.
“May I ask shelter of you for the night,” he begged courteously. As he spoke, Eli’s mother noticed that he carried surveying instruments, and his clothing was weather-stained and worn.
“I have come all the way up the Shenandoah and over the mountains, measuring and marking the land, and making maps of its important features,” he said. “I have not slept more than three or four nights in a bed, but after tramping through your wild forests all day, have lain down before a fire on a little straw or fodder or a bearskin like some beast of the wood. And my cooking has been done on sticks over the same fire with chips of wood for plates.” He smiled as he told of the hardships. “I have strayed away from my companions,” he said, “and do not know where to spend the night.”
“MY COOKING HAS BEEN DONE ON STICKS OVER THE FIRE’”
Eli, crowding close to his mother in the doorway, had been listening to the tale of the stranger lad with the greatest interest. He pushed open the door now.
“Come in,” he said.
“Yes, you must come in and share our supper, and stop with us in the cabin as long as you like,” Eli’s mother added. And in a few minutes the three were gathered around the rough deal table before the fire, eating bowlfuls of the steaming broth.
“My name is Eli. What is yours?” Eli asked, between mouthfuls.
“George,” said the other lad. “I live at Mount Vernon. Our neighbor, Lord Fairfax, has an estate that is so large it extends way over the Blue Ridge Mountains. Ever since I was a little lad I have ridden and walked with Lord Fairfax, and when he decided to have his estate surveyed, even as far as this distant boundary, I gladly undertook the work. I like this wild life and the adventure of making new paths in the wilderness.”