Nell glanced shyly at him; Kate playfully voiced her admiration; Jim met him with a brotherly ridicule which bespoke his affection as well as his amusement; but Colonel Zane, having once yielded to the same burning, riotous craving for freedom which now stirred in the boy's heart, understood, and felt warmly drawn toward the lad.

He said nothing, though as he watched Joe his eyes were grave and kind.

In his long frontier life, where many a day measured the life and fire of ordinary years, he had seen lad after lad go down before this forest fever.

It was well, he thought, because the freedom of the soil depended on these wild, light-footed boys; yet it always made him sad.

How many youths, his brother among them, lay under the fragrant pine-needle carpet of the forest, in their last earthly sleep! The "raising" brought out all the settlement--the women to look on and gossip, while the children played; the men to bend their backs in the moving of the heavy timbers.