"Indeed he wasn't!" and now I grew hot again. "He believed we might better our condition by pushing into the wilderness, for when a man's land is overrun by two armies, as ours had been, farming is a poor trade."
Then he questioned me yet more closely until I had come to an end of my short story, which began with the day we set out from the colony founded by William Penn, and ended with that hour when I came across my poor father's mangled body scarce half a mile from our clearing, where the beasts in human form had tortured him.
All this I told the stranger as if he had been, an old friend, for there was something, in his voice and manner which won my heart at once, and when the sad tale was ended I came to understand he had not questioned me idly.
"My name is Simon Kenton," he said, after a time of silence, as if he was turning over in mind what I had told him. "The day I was sixteen I took to the wilderness because of—there is no reason why that part of it need be told. It was six years ago, an' in those years I've seen a good bit of life on the frontier, though perhaps it would have been better had I gone east an' taken a hand with those who are fightin' against the king. But a soldier's life would raffle my grain, I reckon, so I've held on out here, nearabout Fort Pitt, where there's been plenty to do."
"Fort Pitt!" I exclaimed. "Why, that's a long distance up the river!"
"Six hundred miles or so."
"Are you down here trapping?" I asked, now questioning him as he had me.
"I'm headin' for Corn Island?"
"Then you haven't much further to go. Its no more than a dozen miles down the river."
"So I guessed. I left my canoe over yonder, an' took to the shore partly to find somethin' in the way of meat, and partly to have a look around."