“Mrs. Scott has bravely run the gauntlet of her sorrows.  Now there is a new look in her face.  She is a black eyed, dark haired, energetic, comely woman of forty with cheeks as red as a ripe strawberry.  Solomon calls her ‘middle sized’ but she seems to be large enough to fill his eye.  He shows her great deference and chooses his words with particular care when he speaks to her.  Of late he has taken to singing.  She and the boy seem to have stirred the depths in him and curious things are coming up to the surface—­songs and stories and droll remarks and playful tricks and an unusual amount of laughter.  I suppose that it is the spirit of youth in him, stunned by his great sorrow.  Now touched by miraculous hands he is coming back to his old self.  There can be no doubt of this:  the man is ten years younger than when I first knew him even.  The Little Cricket has laid hold of his heart.  Whig sits between the feet of Solomon in the stern during the day and insists upon sleeping with him at night.

“One morning my old friend was laughing as we stood on the river bank washing ourselves.

“‘What are you laughing at?’ I asked.

“‘That got dum leetle skeezucks!’ he answered.  ‘He were kickin’ all night like a mule fightin’ a bumble bee.  ‘Twere a cold night an’ I held him ag’in’ me to keep the leetle cuss warm.’

“‘Hadn’t you better let him sleep with his mother?’ I asked.

“‘Wall, if it takes two to do his sleepin’ mebbe I better be the one that suffers.  Ain’t she a likely womern?’

“Of course I agreed, for it was evident that she was likely, sometime, to make him an excellent wife and the thought of that made me happy.”

They had fared along down by the rude forts and villages traveling stealthily at night in tree shadows through “the Tory zone,” as the vicinity of Fort Johnson was then called, camping, now and then, in deserted farm-houses or putting up at village inns.  They arrived at Albany in the morning of July fourth.  Setting out from their last camp an hour before daylight they had heard the booming of cannon at sunrise, Solomon stopped his paddle and listened.

“By the hide an’ horns o’ the devil!” he exclaimed.  “I wonder if the British have got down to Albany.”

They were alarmed until they hailed a man on the river road and learned that Albany was having a celebration.

“What be they celebratin’?” Solomon asked.

“The Declaration o’ Independence,” the citizen answered.

“It’s a good idee,” said Solomon.  “When we git thar this ‘ere ol’ rifle o’ mine ‘ll do some talkin’ if it has a chanst.”

Church bells were ringing as they neared the city.  Its inhabitants were assembled on the river-front.  The Declaration was read and then General Schuyler made a brief address about the peril coming down from the north.  He said that a large force under General Burgoyne was on Lake Champlain and that the British were then holding a council with the Six Nations on the shore of the lake above Crown Point.