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.
To-day was without a cloud.

New emigrants had come across the mountains, adding welcome strength to the colony, and extending the limits of the village.

But danger had passed them by, they had heard once or twice more of the great war in the far-away East, but it was so distant and vague that most of them forgot it; the Indians across the Ohio had never come this way, and so far Henry Ware was the only toll that they had paid to the wilderness.