Page 17 - A Hero of Ticonderoga

CHAPTER III

--A VISIT TO THE FORT

The summer brought more settlers to these inviting lands of level, fertile
soil, and when the woods were again bright with autumnal hues, their broad

expanse of variegated color was blotched with many a square of unsightly
new clearing. Job Carpenter looked with disfavor upon such infringement

of the hunter’s domain, but it was welcomed by the Beemans. Though
Seth’s active out-door employment and the constant companionship of
nature made him less lonely than his wife, yet he was of a social nature and

glad of human companionship; while Ruth, sometimes lonely in the
isolation of her new home, rejoiced in the neighborhood of other women.

Only a mile away were the Newtons, a large and friendly family, and
within three miles were four more friendly households, and another at the

falls of the turbid Lemon Fair. At this point a saw mill was being built and
a grist mill talked of. With that convenience established so close at hand,

there would be no more need of the long journey to the mill at
Skeenesborough, a voyage that, in the best of weather, required two days to
accomplish.

The settlers at first pounded their corn into samp, or finer meal for

johnny-cake, by the slow and laborious plumping mill, a huge wooden
mortar with a spring pole pestle.

"Oh, mother," said Nathan, one summer afternoon, as for a while he
stopped the regular thump, thump of the plumping mill to wipe his hot face

and rest his arms that ached with the weary downpull of the great pestle,
"when do you s’pose the folks to the Fair will get the gris’ mill done?"

"Afore long, I hope, for your sake, my boy," she answered, cheerily,
through the window. "Let me spell you awhile and you take a good rest."

Laying her wool cards aside, she came out and set her strong hands to the
pestle, while Nathan ran out to the new road to see what ox-teamster of