Erema

children, unto the third and fourt

llowed me always. This is the cu

r than the silence of the grave, even if I could have buried and bewailed him duly, the common business of

s quite made up to see me safe in my new home, and then himself to start again for still

ed to the leader of our wagon train, at a place where a dark, narrow gorge departed from the moilsome mountain track. "My reasons are my own; let no man trouble himself about t

t. "Forgive and forget, Sir; forgive and forget. What is a hot word spoken hotly?

own in a moment that it must be so, for my father never argued. Argument, to his mind, was a very nice amusement for the weak. My spirits rose as he swung his bear-skin bag upon his shoulder, and the last sound of the laboring caravan g

ough life, so pent in trackless tracts, and pressed together by perpetual peril, every body's manners had been growing free and easy. Every man had been compelled to tell, as truly as he could, the story of his life thus far, to amuse his fellow-creatures-eve

sign of fear, the speaker would have been insulted. But his manner and the power of his look were such that, even af

ravan was lost behind a cloud of rocks, and we two stood in the wild

I know? You have done i

ou know what I think all that. It is for you,

d me, as if I were a little child instead of a maiden just fifteen. This he had never done before, and it mad

ad a stern, cold father. So will you meet the world all th

er; but now, in looking back, it is so easy to see into things. At

y for certain. Whether the time were long or short, it seemed as if it would never end. My father believed that he knew the way to the house of an old settler, at the western foot of the mountains, who had treated

rk, and finding not a trace of it. Although his will was so very strong, his temper was good abo

any tree that grows in Europe, or Africa even. From the plains it can be seen for a hundred miles or more. It stands higher up the mountainside than any oth

, but scrubby bushes and yellow tuf

It is a very straight tree, and regular, like a mighty column, except that on the northern side the wind fro

ee any tree half as large as a broo

y. We must cast back for a mile or two

ance from him stopped my murmuring. And the next thing I

stinct. It is a fearful thing to think of-now that I can think of it-but to save my own little worthless life I must have drained every drop of water from his flat half-gallon jar. The wate

re was none forth-coming. All we had to guide us was a little traveler's compass (whose needle stuck fast on the pivot with sand) and the glaring sun, when he came to sight behind the hot, dry, driving clouds. The clouds were ver