A Little Maid of Ticonderoga

								

would return the beads before starting for home, and she was sadly
disappointed to have Esther depart without a word about them.
Esther had asked Mrs. Carew if Faith might not go to Brandon, and so
Mrs. Carew had told the little girls of the plan for Faith to go to
her Aunt Priscilla in Ticonderoga for the winter and attend school
there.
"Oh! But that's New York. Why, the 'Yorkers' want to take all the
Wilderness. I shouldn't want to go to school with 'Yorkers,'" Esther
had responded, a little scornfully.
For she had often heard her father and his friends talk of the
attempts made by the English officials of New York to drive the
settlers on the New Hampshire Grants from their homes.
"'Tis not the people of New York who would do us harm," Mrs. Carew had
answered. "And Faith will make friends, I hope, with many of her
schoolmates."
It was a beautiful October morning when Esther, seated in front of her
father on the big gray horse, with the pumpkin-shell work-box wrapped
in a safe bundle swinging from the front of the saddle, started for
Brandon. Their way for most of the journey led over a rough trail.
They would pass near the homes of many settlers, then over the lower
slopes of Mooselamoo Mountain, and skirt Lake Dunmore, and would then
find themselves on a smoother road for the remainder of their journey.
Faith walked beside the travelers to the edge of the wood and then the
two little girls said good-bye.
"I'll come again in the spring," Esther called back.
Faith stood watching them until the branches of the trees hid them
from sight. The maples seemed to be waving banners of scarlet leaves,
and the slopes of the Green Mountains were beautiful in the glory of
autumn foliage. The sun shone brightly, the sky was as blue as summer,
and as Faith turned to run swiftly along the path to the mill she
almost wished that she too was starting for a day's journey through
the woods. The path ran along beside the mill-stream.
It seemed to Faith that the brook was traveling beside her like a gay
companion, singing as it went. The little girl had had so few
companions, none except an occasional visitor, that she had made
friends with the birds and small woodland animals, and found
companionship in the rippling music of the stream. There was a fine
family of yellow-hammers just below the mill that Faith often visited,
and she was sure that they knew her quite well. She had watched them
build their nest in the early spring; had seen them bring food to the
young birds, and had sat close by the nest while the young birds made
their first efforts to fly. She knew where a fine silver-coated fox
made its home on the rocky hillside beyond the garden-slope, and had
told her father that "Silver-nose," as she had named the fox, knew
that she was his friend, and would lie quite still at the entrance to
its hole, while she would sit on a big rock not far distant.
But Faith was not thinking of these woodland friends as she ran along