Page 4 - A Hero of Ticonderoga

questions.

"I want to know! A Beeman from ol’ Salisbury," cried the other. "An’ now I
wonder if you be akin to my ol’ comrade in the Rangers, ’Zekiel Beeman?"

"My father’s name was Ezekiel, and he served in Roger’s Rangers."

"Give me your hand, friend," cried the hunter, drawing off his mitten with
his teeth, and extending his hand as he came near to the other. "Well, I

never thought to meet an ol’ friend here in these lonesome woods, to-day.
Yes, an ol’ friend, for that’s what a son of ’Zekiel Beeman’s is to me, though
I never sot eyes on him afore. You’ve maybe hearn him speak of Job

Carpenter? That’s my name."

"Carpenter? Yes, the name sounds familiar, but you know father wa’n’t a
man of many words and never told us much of his sojerin’ days."

"You’re right, he wa’n’t. We all larnt to keep our heads shut when we was
a-scoutin’ an’ a loud word might cost a man his’n an’ many another life."

Seth wondered how long since the hunter had forgotten the lesson, yet he
noticed the voice of the other was never high pitched and he never made a

sudden, abrupt movement.

"An’ so these is your wife an’ childern, be they?" said Job, passing toward
the sled, whose occupants were so muffled in bed-quilts and blankets that
nothing of their forms, and but little of their features, were visible.

"How dedo, marm. How dedo, little uns. Tol’able comf’table, I hope?"

Ruth Beeman answered his kind salutation as audibly as she could out of
her mufflings, and the children, a boy of twelve and a girl of three years

younger, stared at him with round, wondering eyes.

"It’s a hard life that lies afore women an’ children in this wilderness," he
said to himself, and then, in a louder tone: "Wal, I’m glad you’re goin’ to be