the
bushes to our camp. The dog had a great rip across his shoulder,
where the claws had struck and made furrows; but he felt a mighty
pride in our capture, and never had a better appetite for a meal.

There were six more days of travel in that journey--travel so
fraught with hardships, I wonder that some days we had the heart to
press on. More than all, I wonder that the frail body of my mother
was equal to it. But I am writing no vain record of endurance. I
have written enough to suggest what moving meant in the wilderness.
There is but one more color in the scenes of that journey. The
fourth day after we left Chateaugay my grandmother fell ill and
died suddenly there in the deep woods. We were far from any
village, and sorrow slowed our steps. We pushed on, coming soon to
a sawmill and a small settlement. They told us there was neither
minister nor undertaker within forty miles. My father and D'ri
made the coffin of planed lumber, and lined it with deerskin, and
dug the grave on top of a high hill. When all was ready, my
father, who had always been much given to profanity, albeit I know
he was a kindly and honest man with no irreverence in his heart,
called D'ri aside.

"D'ri," said he, "ye 've alwus been more proper-spoken than I hev.
Say a word o' prayer?"

"Don't much b'lieve I could," said he, thoughtfully. "I hev been
t' meeting but I hain't never been no great hand fer prayin'."

"'T wouldn't sound right nohow, fer me t' pray," said my father, "I
got s' kind o' rough when I was in the army."

"'Fraid it 'll come a leetle unhandy fer me," said D'ri, with a
look of embarrassment, "but I don't never shirk a tough job ef it
hes t' be done."

Then he stepped forward, took off his faded hat, his brow wrinkling
deep, and said, in a drawling preacher tone that had no sound of
D'ri in it: "O God, tek care o' gran'ma. Help us t' go on careful,
an' when we 're riled, help us t' keep er mouths shet. O God, help
the ol' cart, an' the ex in pertic'lar. An' don't be noway hard on
us. Amen."

II

June was half over when we came to our new home in the town of
Madrid--then a home only for the foxes and the fowls of the air and
their wild kin of the forest. The road ran through a little valley
thick with timber and rock-bound on the north. There were four
families within a mile of us, all comfortably settled in small log
houses. For temporary use we built a rude bark shanty that had a
partit