In the Valley | Page 4

and other gentlemen, and was often
privileged to listen when they conversed with Mr. Stewart. Thus I had
grown wise in certain respects, while remaining extremely childish in
others. Thus it was that I trembled first at the common hooting of an
owl, and then cried as if to die at hearing the French were coming, and
lastly recovered all my spirits at the reassuring sound of Mr. Stewart's
voice, and the knowledge that he was content to return to his sleep.
I went soundly to sleep myself, presently, and cannot remember to have
dreamed at all.

Chapter II.
Setting Forth How the Girl Child Was Brought to Us.

When I came out of my nest next morning--my bed was on the floor of
a small recess back of the great fireplace, made, I suspect, because the
original builders lacked either the skill or the inclination, whichever it
might be, to more neatly skirt the chimney with the logs--it was quite
late. Some meat and corn-bread were laid for me on the table in Mr.
Stewart's room, which was the chief chamber of the house. Despite the
big fire roaring on the hearth, it was so cold that the grease had
hardened white about the meat in the pan, and it had to be warmed
again before I could sop my bread.
During the solitary meal it occurred to me to question my aunt, the
housekeeper, as to the alarm of the night, which lay heavily once more
upon my mind. But I could hear her humming to herself in the back
room, which did not indicate acquaintance with any danger. Moreover,
it might as well be stated here that my aunt, good soul though she was,
did not command especial admiration for the clearness of her wits,
having been cruelly stricken with the small-pox many years before, and
owing her employment, be it confessed, much more to Mr. Stewart's
excellence of heart than to her own abilities. She was probably the last
person in the Valley whose judgment upon the question of a French

invasion, or indeed any other large matter, I would have valued.
Having donned my coon-skin cap, and drawn on my thick pelisse over
my apron, I put another beech-knot on the fire and went outside. The
stinging air bit my nostrils and drove my hands into my pockets. Mr.
Stewart was at the work which had occupied him for some weeks
previously--hewing out logs on the side hill. His axe strokes rang
through the frosty atmosphere now with a sharp reverberation which
made it seem much colder, and yet more cheerful. Winter had come,
indeed, but I began to feel that I liked it. I almost skipped as I went
along the hard, narrow path to join him.
He was up among the cedars, under a close-woven net of boughs,
which, themselves heavily capped with snow, had kept the ground free.
He nodded pleasantly to me when I wished him good-morning, then
returned to his labor. Although I placed myself in front of him, in the
hope that he would speak, and thus possibly put me in the way to learn
something about this French business, he said nothing, but continued
whacking at the deeply notched trunk. The temptation to begin the talk
myself came near mastering me, so oppressed with curiosity was I; and
finally, to resist it the better, I walked away and stood on the brow of
the knoll, whence one could look up and down the Valley.
It was the only world I knew--this expanse of flats, broken by wedges
of forest stretching down from the hills on the horizon to the very
water's edge. Straight, glistening lines of thin ice ran out here and there
from the banks of the stream this morning, formed on the breast of the
flood through the cold night.
To the left, in the direction of the sun, lay, at the distance of a mile or
so, Mount Johnson, or Fort Johnson, as one chose to call it. It could not
be seen for the intervening hills, but so important was the fact of its
presence to me that I never looked eastward without seeming to behold
its gray stone walls with their windows and loopholes, its stockade of
logs, its two little houses on either side, its barracks for the guard upon
the ridge back of the gristmill, and its accustomed groups of grinning
black slaves, all eyeballs and white teeth, of saturnine Indians in
blankets, and of bold-faced fur-traders. Beyond this place I had never
been, but I knew vaguely that Schenectady was in that direction, where
the French once wrought such misery, and beyond that Albany, the
great town of our parts, and then the big ocean which separated us from

England