we seen our mother give way to despair.

Night began to fall. The woods became alive
with night creatures, and the most harmless made
the most noise. The owls began to hoot, and soon
we heard the wildcat, whose cry--a screech like
that of a lost and panic-stricken child--is one of
the most appalling sounds of the forest. Later the
wolves added their howls to the uproar, but though
darkness came and we children whimpered around
her, our mother still sat in her strange lethargy.

At last my brother brought the horses close to the
cabin and built fires to protect them and us. He
was only twenty, but he showed himself a man dur-
ing those early pioneer days. While he was picketing
the horses and building his protecting fires my
mother came to herself, but her face when she
raised it was worse than her silence had been. She
seemed to have died and to have returned to us
from the grave, and I am sure she felt that she had
done so. From that moment she took up again the
burden of her life, a burden she did not lay down
until she passed away; but her face never lost the
deep lines those first hours of her pioneer life had
cut upon it.

That night we slept on boughs spread on the earth
inside the cabin walls, and we put blankets before
the holes which represented our doors and windows,