overtake his friends in a
wagon further on. A new distrust of mankind had begun to make the boy
an adept in innocent falsehood, the more deceptive as his careless,
cheerful manner, the result of his relief at leaving the city, and his
perfect ease in the loving companionship of night and nature, certainly
gave no indication of his homelessness and poverty.

It was long past midnight, when, weary in body, but still hopeful and
happy in mind, he turned off the dusty road into a vast rolling expanse
of wild oats, with the same sense of security of rest as a traveler to
his inn. Here, completely screened from view by the tall stalks of grain
that rose thickly around him to the height of a man's shoulder, he beat
down a few of them for a bed, on which he deposited his blanket. Placing
his pack for a pillow, he curled himself up in his blanket, and speedily
fell asleep.

He awoke at sunrise, refreshed, invigorated, and hungry. But he was
forced to defer his first self-prepared breakfast until he had reached
water, and a less dangerous place than the wild-oat field to build
his first camp fire. This he found a mile further on, near some dwarf
willows on the bank of a half-dry stream. Of his various efforts to
prepare his first meal, the fire was the most successful; the coffee
was somewhat too substantially thick, and the bacon and herring lacked
definiteness of quality from having been cooked in the same vessel.
In this boyish picnic he missed Susy, and recalled, perhaps a little
bitterly, her coldness at parting. But the novelty of his situation, the
brilliant sunshine and sense of freedom, and the road already awakening
to dusty life with passing teams, dismissed everything but the future
from his mind. Readjusting his pack, he stepped on cheerily. At noon he
was overtaken by a teamster, who in return for a match to light his pipe
gave him a lift of a dozen miles. It is to be feared that Clarence's
account of himself was equally fanciful with his previous story, and
that the teamster parted from him with a genuine regret, and a hope that
he would soon be overtaken by his friends along the road. "And mind that
you ain't such a fool agin to let 'em make you tote their dod-blasted
tools fur them!" he added unsuspectingly, pointing to Clarence's mining
outfit. Thus saved the heaviest part of the day's journey, for the
road was continually rising from the plains during the last six miles,
Clarence was yet able to cover a consi