The stranger readily said his name was Silas Toombs, that he was from Jersey way, and wished, when he had earned enough, to take up a right of land hereabouts, in a region he had often heard extolled by his father, who had served here in Captain Bergen’s company of Rogers’s Rangers. Seth had previously ascertained that no grown-up son of any of his neighbors could be spared to help him, so he finally hired this man, who proved to be efficient and faithful, although not a genial companion, such as an old-time farmer wished to find in his hired help. Ruth treated him with the kindness so natural to her, though she could scarcely conceal her aversion. This, if he understood, he did not seem to notice any more than he did the undisguised dislike of Nathan.
The remainder of the summer and half of the fall passed uneventfully, till one day, when Ruth had been called to the bedside of Mrs. Newton, who was ill of the fever so prevalent in new clearings, Nathan and his sister were left in charge of the house, while their father and hired man worked in a distant field.
The children spent half the pleasant forenoon in alternate rounds of housework and out-door play, now sweeping the floor with hemlock brooms, now running out into the hazy October sunshine to play “Indians” with Nathan’s bow and arrows and Martha’s rag doll. This was stolen and carried into captivity, from which it was rescued by its heroic little mother. Then they threw off their assumed characters and ran into the house to replenish the smouldering fire, and to find that the sunshine, falling upon the floor through the window, was creeping towards the “noon mark,” making it time to begin dinner.
Nathan raised the heavy trap-door to the cellar and descended the ladder, with butcher knife and pewter plate, to get the pork, but had barely got the cover off the barrel when he was recalled to the upper world by a loud cry from his sister:
“Nathan, Nathan, come here quick!”
He scrambled up the ladder and ran to her, where, just outside the door, she was staring intently toward the creek.
“Who be them?” she asked anxiously, as she pointed at two figures just disclosed above the rushes, as they moved swiftly up the narrow channel in an unseen craft.
“I guess they’re Injins,” said Nathan, after a moment’s scrutiny, “and I guess they’re a-trappin’ mushrat. Let’s run over to the bank and see.”
So they ran to the crown of the low bank, where they could command a good view of the rushy level of the marsh, and the narrow belt of clear water that wound through it, reflecting the hazy blue of the sky, the tops of the scarlet water maples, the bronze and yellow weeds, and, here and there, the rough dome of a newly built muskrat house. At each of these the two men, now revealed in a birch canoe, halted for a little space, and then, tying a knot in the nearest tuft of sedge, passed on to the next. There was no mistaking the coppery hue of the faces, the straight black hair, though men of another race might wear the dirty, white blanket coats, and as skilfully manage the light craft.
“Yes, they be Injins,” said Nathan, “and I wish they’d let my mushrat alone. But I s’pose there’s enough for them and me.”