You have a tongue in your mouth, but
sense enough in your head, I believe, to hold it." He turned to Tom.
"McChesney, this is a queer lad you brought us," said he.
"He's a little deevil," agreed Tom, for that had become a formula with
him.
It was all very mysterious to me, and I lay awake many a night with
curiosity, trying to solve a puzzle that was none of my business. And
one day, to cap the matter, two woodsmen arrived at Harrodstown with
clothes frayed and bodies lean from a long journey. Not one of the
hundred questions with which they were beset would they answer, nor say
where they had been or why, save that they had carried out certain orders
of Clark, who was locked up with them in a cabin for several hours.
The first of October, the day of Colonel Clark's departure, dawned crisp
and clear. He was to take with him the disheartened and the cowed, the
weaklings who loved neither work nor exposure nor danger. And before he
set out of the gate he made a little speech to the assembled people.
"My friends," he said, "you know me. I put the interests of Kentucky
before my own. Last year when I left to represent her at Williamsburg
there were some who said I would desert her. It was for her sake I made
that journey, suffered the tortures of hell from scalded feet, was near
to dying in the mountains.
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