“Yes, it is the same story all over.  It was the French who came and spoiled our happy home.  If they had let us alone, perchance we might have been there still, hunting, fishing, following the same kind of life as our fathers—­at peace with ourselves and with the world.  But they came amongst us.  They sowed disunion and strife.  They were resolved to get rid of the English party, as they called it.  They were all softness and mildness to them.  But those in whom the sturdy British spirit flourished they regarded with jealousy and dislike.  They sowed the seeds of disunion.  They spoiled our valley and our life.  Doubtless the germs were there before, but it was the emissaries of France who wrought the mischief.  If they could have done it, I believe they would have taught the Indians to distrust us English; but that was beyond their power.  Even they held in loving reverence the name of Father Fritz, and none of his children, as they called us all alike, could do wrong in their eyes.  So then it was their policy to get rid of such as would not own the supremacy of France in all things.  I was glad at the last to go.  We became weary of the bickerings and strife.  Some of the elders remained behind, but the rest of us went forth to find ourselves a new home and a new country.”

Humphrey listened to this tale with as much interest as it was possible for him to give to any concern other than his own.  Something of that indignant hatred which was springing into active life all through the western continent began to inflame his breast.  It had been no effect of Charles’s inflamed imagination.  The French were raising the Indians against them, and striving to overthrow England’s sons wherever they had a foothold, beyond their immediate colonies.  It was time they should arise and assert themselves.  Humphrey’s eyes kindled as he sat thinking upon these things.

“I too will go forth and fight France,” he said at last; and with that resolve the sense of numb lethargy and despair fell away from him like a worn-out garment, and his old fire and energy returned.

Chapter 3:  Philadelphia.

“I will go and tell my tale in the ears of my countrymen,” said Charles, with steady voice but burning eyes, “and then I will go forth and fight the French, and slay and slay till they be driven from off the face of the western world!”

The fever had left Charles now.  Some of his former strength had come back to him.  But his brother looked at him often with wondering eyes, for it seemed to him that this Charles was a new being, with whom he had but scant acquaintance.  He could not recognize in this stern faced, brooding man the quiet, homely farmer and settler whose home he had shared for so long.

Their new comrades were glad of the rest afforded them by the necessity of waiting till Charles should be fit to move.  They had been travelling for many months, and the shelter of a roof—­even though it was only the roof of a shed—­was grateful to them.