“I tell you, Eb, I get tired chopping wood and hanging round the house.”

“Aha! another moody spell,” said Col.  Zane, glancing kindly at his brother.  “Jack, if you were married you would outgrow those ‘blue-devils.’  I used to have them.  It runs in the family to be moody.  I have known our father to take his gun and go into the woods and stay there until he had fought out the spell.  I have done that myself, but once I married Bessie I have had no return of the old feeling.  Get married, Jack, and then you will settle down and work.  You will not have time to roam around alone in the woods.”

“I prefer the spells, as you call them, any day,” answered Jonathan, with a short laugh.  “A man with my disposition has no right to get married.  This weather is trying, for it keeps me indoors.  I cannot hunt because we do not need the meat.  And even if I did want to hunt I should not have to go out of sight of the fort.  There were three deer in front of the barn this morning.  They were nearly starved.  They ran off a little at sight of me, but in a few moments came back for the hay I pitched out of the loft.  This afternoon Tige and I saved a big buck from a pack of wolves.  The buck came right up to me.  I could have touched him.  This storm is sending the deer down from the hills.”

“You are right.  It is too bad.  Severe weather like this will kill more deer than an army could.  Have you been doing anything with your traps?”

“Yes, I have thirty traps out.”

“If you are going, tell Sam to fetch down another load of fodder before he unhitches.”

“Eb, I have no patience with your brothers,” said Col.  Zane’s wife to him after he had closed the door.  “They are all alike; forever wanting to be on the go.  If it isn’t Indians it is something else.  The very idea of going up the river in this weather.  If Jonathan doesn’t care for himself he should think of the horses.”

“My dear, I was just as wild and discontented as Jack before I met you,” remarked Col.  Zane.  “You may not think so, but a home and pretty little woman will do wonders for any man.  My brothers have nothing to keep them steady.”

“Perhaps.  I do not believe that Jonathan ever will get married.  Silas may; he certainly has been keeping company long enough with Mary Bennet.  You are the only Zane who has conquered that adventurous spirit and the desire to be always roaming the woods in search of something to kill.  Your old boy, Noah, is growing up like all the Zanes.  He fights with all the children in the settlement.  I cannot break him of it.  He is not a bully, for I have never known him to do anything mean or cruel.  It is just sheer love of fighting.”

“Ha!  Ha!  I fear you will not break him of that,” answered Col.  Zane.  “It is a good joke to say he gets it all from the Zanes.  How about the McCollochs?  What have you to say of your father and the Major and John McColloch?  They are not anything if not the fighting kind.  It’s the best trait the youngster could have, out here on the border.  He’ll need it all.  Don’t worry about him.  Where is Betty?”