"Is that your cabin yonder under the big knoll?" he asked, more as if by way of beginning a conversation than from curiosity.

"Yes; have you been there?"

"I looked it over; but didn't try to scrape acquaintance. Does your mother live there?"

"Yes; she and I alone."

"What sent her down into this wilderness with no one but a lad like yourself?" he asked, speaking as if he was twice my age, when, unless all signs failed, he was no more than five years my elder.

"Father was with us when we came, last year. He was killed by the murdering savage sneaks nearly two months ago."

"Why did you hold on here?" the stranger asked, eying me curiously. "Surely the clearin' isn't so far along that it pays to risk your life for it."

"Mother would have packed off; but I couldn't leave."

"Why?"

"It's a poor kind of a son who won't at least try to wipe off such a score, and I'll hold on here till those who killed the poor old man have found out who I am!"