him, he
said to our neighbor, Miss Hawkins, when speaking of me:

"I believe she is the best woman God ever made, and we would have had no
trouble but for her friends."

My sister had removed with her husband to St. Cloud, Minnesota, and
through him I had secured forty acres of land on the shore of one of a
nest of lovely lakes, lying on the east side of the Mississippi, twelve
miles from St. Cloud. On this little farm I would build a cabin of
tamarac logs, with the bark on and the ends sticking out at the corners
criss-cross. My cabin would have one room and a loft, each with a floor
of broad rough boards well jointed, and a ladder to go from one to the
other. It would have an open fire-place, a rough flag hearth, and a
rustic porch, draped with hop vines and wild roses. I would have a
boat, catch fish and raise poultry. No sound of strife should ever come
into my cabin but those of waves, winds, birds and insects. Ah, what a
paradise it would be!

I had not yet learned that every human soul is a Shunamite, "a company
of two armies," and wherever there is one, there is strife.

To live is to contend,
And life is finished when contentions end.

At St. Paul I took a stage, and night came on when we were still twenty
miles from St. Cloud. The wolves stood and looked at the stage, and I
knew they were between me and my hermitage; but they were only prairie
wolves, and all day my cabin had been growing more and more beautiful.
The lakes, the flowers, the level prairies and distant knolls, but most
of all the oak openings were enchanting, and in one of these my cabin
would stand.

The passengers talked politics and I talked too, and one man said to me:

"Did you say you were going to St. Cloud?

"Yes."

"Well, I tell you, madam, them sentiments of yours won't go down there.
Gen. Lowrie don't allow no abolition in these parts and he lives in St.
Cloud."

I had had many surprises, but few to equal this; had heard of Gen.
Lowrie as a man of immense wealth and influence, but no one had hinted
at this view of his character. I had thought of him as the friend of my
friends; but as the other passengers were confirming this account and I
watching the wolves, there flashed across my mind the thought: "This is
a broad country; but if this be true, there is not room in it for Gen.
Lowrie and me."

CHAPTER XXXV.

MY HERMITAGE.

It was midnight before we reached East St. Cloud, and the ferry-boat had
st