to their mother, who put the last touches to their
collars and ties. Then, just as a faint bugle-call, sounding the
advance, was heard from across the prairie to the west, the family
climbed into the wagon.

On the trip down, the eldest and youngest brothers sat in front and
drove. Their mother and the biggest brother occupied the hind seat and
looked after the piccalilli and pies, which they held on their laps. So
the little girl had to content herself with staying in the back of the
wagon on an armful of hay and letting her feet dangle out behind. As the
team trotted south over the rough path that, at the school-house, joined
another leading to the Dutchman's, she clung to the side boards in
impatient silence, her eyes turned across the sloughs toward the
Vermilion, where, through the starlight, were coming the chaplain, some
troopers, and the colonel's son.

It was a still night, and the family could hear other wagons approaching
from various directions, the distant whinnying of ponies traveling
singly, the barking of the Dutchman's dogs, and the thudding gallop of
the nearing cavalry mounts; and when they arrived the same shouts that
greeted them welcomed a score of their neighbors and the dusty army men.

The moments that followed were memorable ones to the little girl.
Standing by on tiptoe, with only the neighbor woman between her and the
colonel's son, she saw the chaplain unite the Dutchman's daughter and
the young farmer. The ceremony took place in the yard, so that all might
witness it, and the biggest brother held the lantern by which the
chaplain read from his prayer-book. The guests gathered about quietly,
and listened reverently to the service and to the prayer for health and
happiness in the dugout home on the Fork. And when the kissing,
handshaking, and congratulations were over, they moved across the yard
to the kitchen door, where they drank hearty toasts to the bride, in
coffee-cups foaming high with beer. Then the married men took their
wives, and the unmarried, their sweethearts, and went into the house to
open the party.

The Dutchman's habitation was different from his neighbors' homes. One
roof sheltered his family, his oxen and his cows, his harvested crops,
his poultry and his pigs. It was a shanty roof, and it covered a long,
sod building that began, at the river end, with the sitting-room,
continued through the bedroom, the kitchen, the granary, the stable, and
the chicken-coop, and was