sundown and sunrise, you may keep
him!"

We tethered the horses in a line, and fastened securely all the doors
but the large front one. We arranged our seats where we were partially
concealed, but where we could see our horses, and could command every
door with our rifles. In quiet tones we chatted about various things,
until about one o'clock, when all became hushed and still. The novelty
of the situation impressed me, and, sitting there in the darkness, I
could not help contrasting my present position with the one I had
occupied a few weeks before. Then the pastor of a city Church, in the
midst of a blessed revival, surrounded by all the comforts of
civilisation; now out here in Minnesota, in this barn, sitting on a
bundle of prairie grass through the long hours of night with a breech-
loading rifle in hand, guarding a number of horses from a band of horse-
thieves.

"Hush! what is that?"

A hand is surely on the door feeling for the wooden latch. We mentally
say, "You have made too much noise, Mr Thief, for your purpose, and you
are discovered." Soon the door opened a little. As it was a beautiful
starlight night, the form of a tall man was plainly visible in the
opening. Covering him with my rifle, and about to fire, quick as a
flash came the thought, "Better be sure that that man is a horse-thief,
or is intent on evil, ere you fire; for it is at any time a serious
thing to send a soul so suddenly into eternity." So keeping my rifle to
my shoulder, I shouted out, "Who's there?"

"Why, it's only your friend Matthew," said our tall friend, as he came
stumbling along in the darkness; "queer if you don't know me by this
time."

As the thought came to me of how near I had been to sending him into the
other world, a strange feeling of faintness came over me, and, flinging
my rifle from me, I sank back trembling like a leaf.

Meanwhile the good-natured fellow, little knowing the risk he had run,
and not seeing the effect his thoughtless action had produced on me,
talked on, saying that as it was so hot and close over at the tents that
he could not sleep there, he thought he would come over and stop with us
in the barn.

There was considerable excitement, and some strong words were uttered at
the camp next morning at his breach of orders and narrow escape, since
instructions had been given to all that none should, under any
consideration, go near the barn while it was being guarded.

At another place in