I must not forget how, at the age of seventeen, I became a landowner, thanks to my name being on the roll of Colonel Clark’s regiment.  For, in a spirit of munificence, the Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia had awarded to every private in that regiment one hundred and eight acres of land on the Ohio River, north of the Falls.  Sergeant Thomas McChesney, as a reward for his services in one of the severest campaigns in history, received a grant of two hundred and sixteen acres!  You who will may look at the plat made by William Clark, Surveyor for the Board of Commissioners, and find sixteen acres marked for Thomas McChesney in Section 169, and two hundred more in Section 3.  Section 3 fronted the Ohio some distance above Bear Grass Creek, and was, of course, on the Illinois shore.  As for my own plots, some miles in the interior, I never saw them.  But I own them to this day.

I mention these things as bearing on the story of my life, with which I must get on.  And, therefore, I may not dwell upon this injustice to the men who won an empire and were flung a bone long afterwards.

It was early autumn once more, and such a busy week we had had at the mill, that Tom was perforce obliged to remain at home and help, though he longed to be gone with Cowan and Ray a-hunting to the southwest.  Up rides a man named Jarrott, flings himself from his horse, passes the time of day as he watches the grinding, helps Tom to tie up a sack or two, and hands him a paper.

“What’s this?” says Tom, staring at it blankly.

“Ye won’t blame me, Mac,” answers Mr. Jarrott, somewhat ashamed of his role of process-server. “’Tain’t none of my doin’s.”

“Read it, Davy,” said Tom, giving it to me.

I stopped the mill, and, unfolding the paper, read.  I remember not the quaint wording of it, save that it was ill-spelled and ill-writ generally.  In short, it was a summons for Tom to appear before the court at Danville on a certain day in the following week, and I made out that a Mr. Neville Colfax was the plaintiff in the matter, and that the suit had to do with land.

“Neville Colfax!” I exclaimed, “that’s the man for whom Mr. Potts was agent.”

“Ay, ay,” said Tom, and sat him down on the meal-bags.  “Drat the varmint, he kin hev the land.”

“Hev the land?” cried Polly Ann, who had come in upon us.  “Hev ye no sperrit, Tom McChesney?”

“There’s no chance ag’in the law,” said Tom, hopelessly.  “Thar’s Perkins had his land tuck away last year, and Terrell’s moved out, and twenty more I could name.  And thar’s Dan’l Boone, himself.  Most the rich bottom he tuck up the critters hev got away from him.”

“Ye’ll go to Danville and take Davy with ye and fight it,” answered Polly Ann, decidedly.  “Davy has a word to say, I reckon.  ’Twas he made the mill and scar’t that Mr. Potts away.  I reckon he’ll git us out of this fix.”

Mr. Jarrott applauded her courage.