Description
A Frontier Girl (in Short Story Collection Vol. 061 )
A TALE OF THE BACKWOOD SETTLEMENTS
A girl of fifteen, slim and lithe in figure–although it would scarcely
have suggested itself to a casual observer, so disfigured was it by the
thick, homespun garment in which she was clothed–stood looking out from
the door of a log cabin over the lake which lay a hundred yards away.
Her face would have been almost childish had it not been for a certain
alertness of expression and keenness of glance which would never have
been seen in the face of a town-bred girl, nor in one brought up in a
country where the only danger ever to be encountered was in crossing a
meadow in which a bull was grazing. Mary Mitford was the only child of
the settler who owned the cabin. He had at one time been a well-to-do
farmer, but he had fallen into difficulties and been obliged to give up
his farm and travel farther west, where land could be had for the
taking up.
The times had been peaceful, and although the spot he had fixed upon was
ten miles from the nearest village, that did not deter him from settling
there. It was a natural clearing of some twenty acres in extent. The
land was fertile, and sloped gradually down to the lake. A clear spring
rose close to the spot where he had determined to make his house, and as
to Indian troubles he shrugged his shoulders and said: "If the Indians
break out I shall only have to shut up my cabin and move into the
village; but as there is no house nearer than that, no tracks in the
forest leading past my place, and nothing worth stealing, it is hardly
likely that the red-skins will come my way. They are more likely to
attack the village than they are to visit my shanty."
He had now lived on his little farm for four years, and had had no
reason to
Product ID: 9781776800957
Sku: 9781776800957
