and kept our watch-fires burning. Soon the other
children fell asleep, but there was no sleep for me.
I was only twelve years old, but my mind was full of
fancies. Behind our blankets, swaying in the night
wind, I thought I saw the heads and pushing shoul-
ders of animals and heard their padded footfalls.
Later years brought familiarity with wild things,
and with worse things than they. But to-night that
which I most feared was within, not outside of, the
cabin. In some way which I did not understand
the one sure refuge in our new world had been taken
from us. I hardly knew the silent woman who lay
near me, tossing from side to side and staring into
the darkness; I felt that we had lost our mother.



II

IN THE WILDERNESS

Like most men, my dear father should never
have married. Though his nature was one of
the sweetest I have ever known, and though he would
at any call give his time to or risk his life for others,
in practical matters he remained to the end of his
days as irresponsible as a child. If his mind turned
to practical details at all, it was solely in their bear-
ing toward great developments of the future. To
him an acorn was not an acorn, but a forest of young