“Your uncle came into the place after I left it. I was born here, in a house that stood on the knoll yonder. That cluster of bushes stands where the hearth-stone used to lie.”
“I noticed, as I passed the spot this morning, that a building once stood there. It must have been a long time ago.”
“Sixty-nine years ago, last March, I was born in that house, or rather in the house which stood there then. This country then was a wilderness. There was one log-house where the village now stands, and one between this and the river. I have not lived here for more than forty years. Latterly I go through the place once a year, as I go for my pension, and I always come to this spot. My father lies here, and—another friend. I always come and look upon the place of their rest. They do not know it. It does not do them any good, but it does me good. This is the grave of my father,” laying his hand on the stone noticed above as being the only one which bore an inscription. The inscription was as follows: “James Hampton, died July 16, 1777, aged forty-five years.”
The old man uncovered his head as he laid his hand upon the stone, and gazed in silence upon the earth which lay above the remains of his parent. Deforest felt that he was an intruder, and was about to retire.
“Do not go,” said the stranger. “I never met any one here before. It seems like meeting with a friend. That is a feeling which persons as old as I am seldom experience.”
Deforest, whose warm heart was strongly interested in the aged stranger, gladly accepted his invitation to remain.
“You were young when your father died,” said he, looking again at the inscription.
“I was in my fourteenth year. He was killed by a rifle-ball, in an attack made upon the house by a party of Indians. I have no doubt they were led by a tory who lived in a house which stood behind the ridge yonder, to the east. My friends wished to have it put on the tombstone that he was shot by the Indians. I believed that the shot which killed him was fired by a neighbor. I would not have the stone tell an untruth; so nothing is said about the manner of his death.”
“I should be greatly interested in hearing an account of the matter, if it be not painful to you to relate it.”
“Come and sit down on this rock and I will tell you all about it. It happened more than fifty years ago, yet it is as fresh in my mind as if it had happened yesterday.”