Naturally the first topic of conversation related to that day's visit from Grandma Elsie and Walter and its main object—the appeal for help to the good work going on among the mountaineers of Kentucky and Tennessee.
"I am glad we were given the opportunity to help it," remarked the captain. "It has set me to thinking of the pioneers and early settlers of that section of our land. Among them Daniel Boone and Simon Kenton."
"Oh, papa, please tell us about them!" exclaimed Elsie.
"Some time, daughter," he answered pleasantly; "but the rest of this little company may not care to hear the old stories repeated just now."
At that there was a unanimous expression of desire to do so, and he presently began.
"Simon Kenton's lifetime took in both our wars with England, as he was born in 1755 and lived until April, 1836. Virginia was his native State, but his father was Irish and his mother Scotch. They were poor, and Simon received but little education. At the age of sixteen he had a fight with another young fellow named William Veach about a love affair. He thought he had killed Veach, so fled over the Alleghanies. There he called himself Simon Butler. He formed friendships with traders and hunters, among them Simon Girty."
"Girty, that cruel, cruel wretch!" cried Elsie. "How could anybody want to have him for a friend?"
"He was a bad, cruel man," replied her father, "but perhaps never had any good teaching. His father had died and his mother married again, and they were all taken prisoners by the Indians and his step-father burned at the stake when Simon Girty was but five years old. It was three years before he was released, and I do not know that he ever had any education. Many cruel deeds are told of him, but he was really a good friend to Simon Kenton, and once saved him from being burned at the stake by the Indians.
"But to go back, Kenton was soon persuaded by a young man named Yager, who had been taken by the Western Indians when a child, and spent a good many years among them, to go with him to a land called by the Indians Kan-tuc-kee, which he described as a most delightful place.