The next year came more tidings of a sort I did not understand.  I remember once bringing back from the Cross-Roads a crumpled newspaper, which my father read again and again, and then folded up and put in his pocket.  He said nothing to me of these things.  But the next time I went to the Cross-Roads, the woman asked me:—­

“Is your Pa for the Congress?”

“What’s that?” said I.

“I reckon he ain’t,” said the woman, tartly.  I recall her dimly, a slattern creature in a loose gown and bare feet, wife of the storekeeper and wagoner, with a swarm of urchins about her.  They were all very natural to me thus.  And I remember a battle with one of these urchins in the briers, an affair which did not add to the love of their family for ours.  There was no money in that country, and the store took our pelts in exchange for what we needed from civilization.  Once a month would I load these pelts on the white mare, and make the journey by the path down the creek.  At times I met other settlers there, some of them not long from Ireland, with the brogue still in their mouths.  And again, I saw the wagoner with his great canvas-covered wagon standing at the door, ready to start for the town sixty miles away.  ’Twas he brought the news of this latest war.

One day I was surprised to see the wagoner riding up the path to our cabin, crying out for my father, for he was a violent man.  And a violent scene followed.  They remained for a long time within the house, and when they came out the wagoner’s face was red with rage.  My father, too, was angry, but no more talkative than usual.

“Ye say ye’ll not help the Congress?” shouted the wagoner.

“I’ll not,” said my father.

“Ye’ll live to rue this day, Alec Trimble,” cried the man.  “Ye may think ye’re too fine for the likes of us, but there’s them in the settlement that knows about ye.”

With that he flung himself on his horse, and rode away.  But the next time I went to the Cross-Roads the woman drove me away with curses, and called me an aristocrat.  Wearily I tramped back the dozen miles up the creek, beside the mare, carrying my pelts with me; stumbling on the stones, and scratched by the dry briers.  For it was autumn, the woods all red and yellow against the green of the pines.  I sat down beside the old beaver dam to gather courage to tell my father.  But he only smiled bitterly when he heard it.  Nor would he tell me what the word aristocrat meant.

That winter we spent without bacon, and our salt gave out at Christmas.  It was at this season, if I remember rightly, that we had another visitor.  He arrived about nightfall one gray day, his horse jaded and cut, and he was dressed all in wool, with a great coat wrapped about him, and high boots.  This made me stare at him.  When my father drew back the bolt of the door he, too, stared and fell back a step.

“Come in,” said he.

“D’ye ken me, Alec?” said the man.