LADIES-IN-WAITING
nest in the low pine boughs, while her mate perched on the mossy logs by the riverside unmolested.
The Sokokis built their bark wigwams here and there on the bank, paddling their birch canoes over the river’s smooth surface, or threading the foamy torrents farther down its course.
Here was the wonderful spring that fed, and still feeds, Aunt Judy’s Brook, the most turbulent little stream in the county. Many a moccasin track has been made in the soft earth around the never-failing fountain, and many the wooden bucket lowered into its crystal depths by the Dalton Righters when in their turn they possessed the land.
The day of the Indian was over now, and the day of the farmer who succeeded him was over, too. The crash of the loom and the whir of the spinning-wheel were heard no longer, but Amanda Dalton, spinster,—descendant of the original Tristram Dalton, to whom the claim belonged,—sat on alone in her house, and not far away sat Caleb
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