in case he persisted.  As the girl was not only beautiful, but amiable—­though, as will be seen, rather weak—­and her family as respectable as any, though unfortunately but poor, Israel deemed his father’s conduct unreasonable and oppressive; particularly as it turned out that he had taken secret means to thwart his son with the girl’s connections, if not with the girl herself, so as to place almost insurmountable obstacles to an eventual marriage.  For it had not been the purpose of Israel to marry at once, but at a future day, when prudence should approve the step.  So, oppressed by his father, and bitterly disappointed in his love, the desperate boy formed the determination to quit them both for another home and other friends.

It was on Sunday, while the family were gone to a farmhouse church near by, that he packed up as much of his clothing as might be contained in a handkerchief, which, with a small quantity of provision, he hid in a piece of woods in the rear of the house.  He then returned, and continued in the house till about nine in the evening, when, pretending to go to bed, he passed out of a back door, and hastened to the woods for his bundle.

It was a sultry night in July; and that he might travel with the more ease on the succeeding day, he lay down at the foot of a pine tree, reposing himself till an hour before dawn, when, upon awaking, he heard the soft, prophetic sighing of the pine, stirred by the first breath of the morning.  Like the leaflets of that evergreen, all the fibres of his heart trembled within him; tears fell from his eyes.  But he thought of the tyranny of his father, and what seemed to him the faithlessness of his love; and shouldering his bundle, arose, and marched on.

His intention was to reach the new countries to the northward and westward, lying between the Dutch settlements on the Hudson, and the Yankee settlements on the Housatonic.  This was mainly to elude all search.  For the same reason, for the first ten or twelve miles, shunning the public roads, he travelled through the woods; for he knew that he would soon be missed and pursued.

He reached his destination in safety; hired out to a farmer for a month through the harvest; then crossed from the Hudson to the Connecticut.  Meeting here with an adventurer to the unknown regions lying about the head waters of the latter river, he ascended with this man in a canoe, paddling and pulling for many miles.  Here again he hired himself out for three months; at the end of that time to receive for his wages two hundred acres of land lying in New Hampshire.  The cheapness of the land was not alone owing to the newness of the country, but to the perils investing it.  Not only was it a wilderness abounding with wild beasts, but the widely-scattered inhabitants were in continual dread of being, at some unguarded moment, destroyed or made captive by the Canadian savages, who, ever since the French war, had improved every opportunity to make forays across the defenceless frontier.