Beyond both were the hills and the unbroken
forest.
Now and then a man, carrying on his shoulder the inevitable Kentucky
rifle, long and slender-barreled, passed through the palisade, but the
cardinal note of the scene was peace and cheerfulness. The town was
prospering, its future no longer belonged to chance; there would be
plenty, of the kind that they liked.
In the Ware house was a silent sadness, silent because these were stern
people, living in a stern time, and it was the custom to hide one's
griefs. The oldest son was gone; whether he had perished nobody knew,
nor, if he had perished, how.
John Ware was not an emotional man, feelings rarely showed on his face,
and his wife alone knew how hard the blow had been to him--she knew
because she had suffered from the same stroke. But the children, the
younger brother Charles and the sister Mary could not always remember,
and with them the impression of the one who was gone would grow dimmer
in time. The border too always expected a certain percentage of loss in
human life, it was one of the facts with which the people must reckon,
and thus the name of Henry Ware was rarely spoken.
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