"Meriwether Lewis, Meriwether for his mother's people," answered the proud and happy father.
"And will you march with the minute men?"
"I shall be there," said William Lewis.
II
THE CLARK HOME
"What do you see, William?"
A red-headed boy was standing at the door of a farmhouse on the road between Fredericksburg and Richmond, in the valley of the Rappahannock.
"The soldiers, mother, the soldiers!"
Excitedly the little four-year-old flew down under the mulberry trees to greet his tall and handsome brother, George Rogers Clark, returning from the Dunmore war.
Busy, sewing ruffles on her husband's shirt and darning his long silk stockings, the mother sat, when suddenly she heard the voice of her son with his elder brother.
"I tell you, Jonathan, there is a storm brewing. But I cannot take an oath of allegiance to the King that my duty to my country may require me to disregard. The Governor has been good to me, I admit that. I cannot fight him—and I will not fight my own people. Heigh-ho, for the Kentucky country."
Dropping her work, Mrs. Clark, Ann Rogers, a descendant of the martyr of Smithfield, and heir through generations of "iron in the blood and granite in the backbone," looked into the approaching, luminous eyes.
"I hope my son has been a credit to his country?"
"A credit?" exclaimed Jonathan. "Why, mother, Lord Dunmore has offered him a commission in the British army!"
"But I cannot take it," rejoined George Rogers, bend-
