"Over the hills, and over the main,
To Flanders, Portugal, or Spain;
The king commands, and we'll obey,
Over the hills and far away.
"Courage, boys, it is one to ten,
But we return all gentlemen;
While conq'ring colors we display,
Over the hills and far away."
And there was a duet, which Tom had heard at the opera in London, and which he sang, imitating the respective voices of the highwayman and the adoring Polly.
The tune took a lasting possession of Dick, and the sweet-sounding recurrent line exercised upon him a witchery that increased as he grew. He chose for his bedroom the rear apartment of the loft over the kitchen, because its window looked towards the east, and his first glance at dawn, his latest at night, was towards the farthest hill-tops. There were hills to the west, too, a great many more of them; mountain ranges, from the straight ridge of the Tuscaroras, to the farthest Alleghanies; but Dick's heart looked not in that direction, where he knew there was but savage wilderness all the thousands of miles to the Pacific Ocean. Towards the east, where the live world was, he longed to wing. Strangely enough, so had circumstance directed, he never, till he was seventeen years old, travelled as far as to the farthest mountains in sight southward or eastward. His father had turned his back on the Old World, thrown his interests heart and soul with those of the new land, built up a well-provided home on the outer verge of civilization, joined irrevocably the advance guard of the westward march of men. What little business he had with towns could be done through the pack-horse men and wagoners. So Dick had only his imagination on which to call for an idea of the level country towards the sea. What was behind the hills? How he envied the birds he saw flying towards that distant azure band that backed the green hills nearer! Should it ever be his lot to follow them?
At seventeen Dick was a strong, lithe youth, five feet eleven inches tall, and destined to grow no taller; with a thoughtful, somewhat eager face, whose sharpness of feature and alertness of expression had some suggestion of the fox, but with no indication of that animal's vices; brown hair that fell back to its queue from a wide and open brow; and blue eyes both steady and keen. Such was his appearance one sunny spring morning when he started from the house to join the men in the field, from which the sound of his father's "whoa," and of Tom MacAlister's chirping to the plow-horses, could be heard through the blossoming fruit-trees in which the birds were twittering. He returned his mother's smile through the open kitchen window, at which she stood kneading the dough for the week's baking. As he went towards the lane which ran up in front of the house from the so-called road, he could hear her voice while she half unconsciously sang at her work:
"'Over the hills, and over the main,
To Flanders, Portugal, or Spain;
The king commands, and we'll obey,
Over the hills and far away.'"
He took up the tune and hummed it, and, though the cheerful solitude around him seemed ineffably sweet, he sighed as he followed with his eyes the course of a tiny white cloud towards the high blue eastern horizon. It was Saturday, next to the last day of April, 1775.
As he leaped over the rail fence, from the houseyard to the lane, he saw a horse turn into the latter from the road. He recognized the rider, a good-looking young man, one of the few in the neighborhood with whom Dick was intimate.
"Good morning, M'Cleland," said Dick, heartily. "Where from?"
"From Hunter's Mill, and I can stay only a moment to give you the news, if you haven't heard it." He stopped his horse.