Prescott, Ontario

“ HIS LIFE The Prescotts are an ancient family as antiquity is reckoned in the United States. The first Anglo-American of that name, John Prescott, an old Cromwellian soldier, took up residence in this country about 1640, and after living awhile at Watertown, Massachusetts, made a permanent home for himself at Lancaster, then a frontier settlement. When thieving Indians plundered him, it is said that he used to put on helmet, gorget, and cuirass, and start in pursuit. Being a powerful man and stern of countenance, his terrific appearance in his armor had a salutary effect on the red men. ”

“ Prescott stands to profit by Jernyngham’s death: he has control of the holding until the year’s up, and it’s a pretty good crop. He declares the jacket isn’t Jernyngham’s; he won’t allow the man can be in the muskeg. ”

“ His widely recognised ability brought him wealth, so that he lived in liberal fashion, in a home whose generous appointments and cultivated ease created an atmosphere that was rare indeed in those early days, when narrow means and a crude provincialism combined to make New England life unlovely. Prescott was not only an able lawyer, the worthy compeer of Dexter, Otis, and Webster—he was a scholar by instinct, widely read, thoughtful, and liberal-minded in the best sense of the word. ”

“ It was situated on the edge of a belt of a muskeg sprinkled with birches and small pines, where the new railroad, leaving the open country to the south, ran up toward the great coniferous forest that fringes the northern portion of the prairie. Prescott had sold his horse at a lonely farm and he was now tired and hungry, but he felt satisfied that he was on the right track and had succeeded in eluding the police. Curtis and Private Stanton were men of fixed ideas; believing Jernyngham to be dead, they had, no doubt, merely made a few perfunctory inquiries at the nearest railroad camps. ”

“ Greg went on, after a few moments. "By the time I reach West Point, just as likely as not, I'll get a letter asking me to consider the matter as past history only."
"Greg, Greg!" muttered Prescott, shaking his head gravely. "I'm afraid you're not very constant.
"I?" retorted Cadet Holmes indignantly. "Dick, you're harboring the wrong idea. It's the girls who are not constant. Though they were all nice little bits of femininity," Greg added reminiscently in a tone of regret.
Late in the afternoon the chums arrived in New York. After putting up at a hotel they had time for dinner and a stroll. ”

“ The place began to revive, a good school was built, churches were established, the surrounding country was planted to wheat to furnish grain for one of the largest mills in the country, responsible men took hold of the business enterprises and today Prescott is one of the most thriving little towns in the county. The children of William Walter, having been reared in this valley, have seen all of the changes wrought in the last half-century. They have seen the wild, unbroken prairies developed to their present high state of cultivation and the eldest daughter, Mrs. ”

“ Greg, as the cadet pair strolled back from the railway station.
"What'll it be in after years," sighed Dick, "with you up at some fort on the Great Lakes, say, with me in Boston, Tom and Harry somewhere out West, with Dave on the European station and Dan, perhaps, on the China station? Oh, well, chums who want to stick together through life should go in for jobs in the same factory!"
"I suppose we'll get more used to being apart, as the years roll on," muttered Greg. "But I know it would be mighty jolly, this summer, if all the fellows of Dick & Co. could be here in Gridley." ”

“ Its success was remarkable, and it was reprinted in England, Germany, and Spain.
Mr. Prescott was then nearly forty-two years old, tall, handsome, and attractive in his manner. He led a regular life, planning his days carefully, rising at a fixed hour each morning, and taking exercise in the open air. He was a good horseman and composed some of his most stirring battle scenes as he galloped along the country roads.
He divided his time among three residences—one in the city of Boston, another at Lynn, with a view of{31} the ocean, and a third at Pepperell, the old home of Colonel Prescott. ”

“ J.S. Prescott, the Pastor at Fond du Lac, had been bred to the legal profession in the State of Ohio. He came to Wisconsin as a Local Preacher, and joined the Conference in 1846. He had been stationed at Sheboygan, Waupun, and Green Bay. He was a man of sharp, decisive movements, sometimes angular in his opinions and measures, but full of energy and not afraid of hard work. He kept no horse, even when on the largest circuits, as he could not afford to wait for so laggard a conveyance. ”

“ Prescott's early ancestors had been great borderers, renowned Indian fighters and adepts in the ways of the forest, when the red men, silent and tenacious, followed upon their tracks for days and it was necessary to practise every art to throw off the pursuers, unseen but known to be there. ”

“ Why, the Army officers in Arizona sleep all day and grumble about the heat all night. They have tame Apaches to do their work for them. Oh, no, you wouldn't suffer down in Arizona!"
"But how do you fellows come to be home at this time?" asked Dick.
"Homesick!" sighed Tom. "The fellows in our engineer corps are entitled to some leave. So Harry and I waited until we had enough leave piled up, and then we started back for Gridley."
"Well, it's hot on this corner," muttered Greg, "and there's an ice cream place down the block, where the electric fans are going. ”

“ But just now the town holds two West Point cadets, and two young engineers from the real West, which makes Gridley no place to turn a vaudeville powder-play loose in."
"Wild Charlie" and his band fled as fast as they could, for the crowd was jeering loudly and talking of taking all six to the nearest horse-trough for a ducking.
"Is that the best the old town can do for excitement in these days?" laughed Reade, as soon as our young friends had separated themselves from the laughing crowd and had started on a stroll.
"Why, that little episode was doing well enough for any town," smiled Dick. ”

“ Cheerfulness is riveted in such a physical base as youth and strength, and Prescott was no exception. He could even smile behind his hand when he saw General Wood draw forth the infallible bowie-knife, pull a piece of pine from a rickety box that held fuel for the stove and begin to whittle from it long, symmetrical shavings that curled beautifully. ”

“ As Dick pushed aside the flap and entered his tent, he beheld his chum and roommate, Greg Holmes, now a cadet lieutenant, carefully transferring himself to his spoony dress uniform.
"Going to the hop to-night, old ramrod?" asked Greg carelessly, though affectionately.
"Not in my line of hike," yawned Prescott. "You know I'm no hopoid."
"Oh, loyal swain!" laughed Greg in mock admiration. "You hop but little oftener than once a year, when Laura comes on from the home town! You throw away nearly all of the pleasures of the waxed floor." ”

“ Prescott dismounted and turned loose his horse, short-hobbled, near the muskeg about two o’clock one hot afternoon. He had begun work at four that morning, and, with harvest drawing near, time was precious to him, but he was filled with a keen curiosity to see what progress Curtis had made in his search. He had a strong personal interest in the matter, because it seemed that some suspicion might rest on him; though he was far from sharing the corporal’s conviction that Jernyngham was dead. Stopping at the edge of the ravine, he looked about, taking in the details of the scene. ”

“ John raked open the coals and brought out a little popcorn that had lasted through the winter. Thomas agreed to pop it for them, and John 44 took down his powder-horn. He wanted to finish whittling the design on it. Dorothy coaxed Jenny down on the settle to tell about her visit in Boston and Mary Jane brought out a skein of soft, white wool.
“Perhaps you will hold this for me, John Lewis? I am going to knit a hood for the new babe Samuel, but the wool must first be wound in a ball.”
“No, Mary Jane, there is a better way to hold that worsted than on a man’s outstretched arms. ”

“ There’s more in life than whacking rivets and holding the caulker. When a man has finished his work in this wilderness, what has he to do? There’s no music halls, no nothing; only the dismal prairie that makes your eyes sore to look at.”
Prescott had heard other Englishmen express themselves in a similar fashion, and he laughed. ”

“ It was a modest house to which Prescott turned his steps, built two stories in height, of red brick, with green shutters over the windows, and in front a little brick-floored portico supported on white columns in the Greek style. His heart gave a great beat as he noticed the open shutters and the thin column of smoke rising from the chimney. The servants at least were there! He had been gone three years, and three years of war is a long time to one who is not yet twenty-five. ”

“ Ball had left his children and their mother in Watertown; she being at times insane. Prescott's first lot embraced part of the grounds upon which the public buildings in Lancaster now stand, but this he soon parted with, and took up his abode a mile to the south west, on the sunny slope of George Hill, where, beside a little brooklet of pure cool water, which then doubtless came rollicking down over its gravelly bed with twice the flow it has to-day, there had been built, two years at least before, the trucking house of Symonds & King. ”

“ A mule in a freight outfit unloading at the company store brayed a sonorous approval and the night shift turned over in their bunks and yawned a curse.
"I don't believe I want any lunch today," mused Prescott, and he turned aimlessly into a trail that crept around huge bowlders here and there and then with frightful acclivity darted up and up.
"The great and only superintendent of the War Eagle Mining Company can't iceep his bookkeeper from thinking of her, anyway," he confided to the trail, as he dug his toes into it and unforgivingly eyed a steep place ahead. ”

“ She grasped his meaning and looked at him steadily with an air of pride.
“Then must I tell you that I have as much faith in Jack Prescott as I had in the man whom I supposed to be Cyril Jernyngham? But you must justify my confidence. You have been wrongly and cruelly accused; don’t you see the duty that lies on you?” ”

“ Ellis fell over sideways, his feet thudding.
"Up with you, sir," admonished Dick. "You are still so full of egotism that it sways you like the walking beam of a steamboat. Up with you, mister, and up you stay until there is no ballast of conceit left in you."
Crab-crab-crab! Mr. Briggs continued to move sidewise and backward over the tent flooring.
Mr. Ellis was growing frightfully red in the face. But Prescott, from the remembrance of his own plebe days, knew to a dot how long a healthy plebe could keep that inverted position without serious injury. ”

“ Jernyngham moved abruptly, but Prescott raised his hand.
“Let me get through! I believe you’re honest; you’re acting from a sense of duty, which is why I tell you that you’re tormenting yourself without a cause. I had no hand in your son’s disappearance, and it’s my firm conviction that he’s alive now and wandering through British Columbia with a mineral prospector.” ”

“ Any yearling would gladly have served tonight, in order to see what doughty Dick Prescott would do against his second man in the same evening. With Nelson and Anderson came two other yearlings who had agreed to see Dodge safely to the door of cadet hospital.
Bert Dodge had been brought around at last. He was a bit dazed, but he grinned, as he went out, when Dennison murmured in his ear:
"Never you mind, old man. I'll take care of Prescott. I'll twist the ramrod into a figure 8."
"We must proceed as promptly as possible, gentlemen," rapped out
Mr. Packard. "We must be finished before taps." ”

“ Then he began to talk of the life in the capital, the condition of the army and the Confederate States, furnishing a continual surprise to Prescott, who now saw that beneath the man's occasional frivolity and epicurean tastes lay a mind of wonderful penetration, possessing that precious quality generally known as insight. ”

“ The frontiersmen of to-day, bibulous gamblers, reckless duelists, blasphemous savages of mixed blood, had no prototype in Colonial days, for even the human harvest then gathered to the stocks, the whipping-post and the gallows, was of a far less obtrusive class of offenders against morals and social decency. Prescott was a Puritan soldier, a seeker of liberty not license ”

“ It is no affair of mine and perhaps a breach of good manners to mention it, but if 246 I were in Colston’s place, I should feel disturbed about the way in which his sister-in-law has taken Prescott’s part.”
“Why?”
“The reason should be obvious. Leaving the man’s guilt or innocence out of the question, there is his position; I needn’t enlarge on it. Muriel’s family is an old and honored one; it would be insufferable that she should break away from its traditions. Then we know what her upbringing has been. Could one calmly contemplate her throwing herself away on a working farmer?” ”

“ Colston. “We like to think we haven’t lost you altogether.”
Disregarding his horses, Prescott turned toward her with a bow.
“Face the truth, ma’am. If you’re ever in a tight place, we’ll send you what help we can, hard men, such as can’t be raised in your cities, to keep the flag flying, but we stop there. Don’t think we belong to you—we stand firm on our own feet, a new free nation. I”—he paused in an impressive manner—“am a Canadian.”
Muriel felt a responsive thrill. ”

“ Prescott. I have not even mentioned the subject to his roommate, Mr. Holmes."
"Then whom do you represent?" demanded the other cadet.
"Myself and other believers in Mr. Prescott," replied Anstey simply. "The very least we ask is that you stop punishing so many of us through Mr. Prescott. Gentlemen, do you not feel that any man who commands as many friends in his class as does Mr. Prescott must be a man above the petty meannesses of which he was accused, and for which he was sent to Coventry?"
"I've been one of the sufferers through Mr. Prescott," commented Durville grimly. ”