It was a fit home, however, for such a man as Ebenezer Webster.

He was a borderer in the fullest sense in a commonwealth of borderers.

He was, too, a splendid specimen of the New England race; a true descendant of ancestors who had been for generations yeomen and pioneers.

Tall, large, dark of hair and eyes, in the rough world in which he found himself he had been thrown at once upon his own resources without a day's schooling, and compelled to depend on his own innate force of sense and character for success.

He had had a full experience of desperate fighting with Frenchmen and Indians, and, the war over, he had returned to his native town with his hard-won rank of captain.