ayer paused to hear these musical whispers
"up in the gallery," as he was wont to call it.

Often if the others were weary and depressed he would dance merrily
around the fire, playing a lively tune, with Sambo glad to lend a helping
foot and much noise to the program. If mosquitos and flies were
troublesome Samson built smudges, filling their camp with the smoky
incense of dead leaves, in which often the flavor of pine and balsam was
mingled. By and by the violin was put away and all knelt by the fire
while Sarah prayed aloud for protection through the night. So it will be
seen that they carried with them their own little theater, church and
hotel.

Soon after darkness fell, Sarah and the children lay down for the night,
while Samson stretched out with his blankets by the fire in good weather,
the loaded musket and the dog Sambo lying beside him. Often the howling
of wolves in the distant forest kept them awake, and the dog muttering
and barking for hours.

Samson woke the camp at daylight and a merry song was his reveille while
he led the horses to their drink.

"Have a good night?" Sarah would ask.

"Perfect!" he was wont to answer. "But when the smudges went out the
mosquiters got to peckin' my face."

"Mine feels like a pincushion," Sarah would often answer. "Will you heat
up a little water for us to wash with?"

"You better believe I will. Two more hedge hogs last night, but Samba let
'em alone."

Sambo had got his mouth sored by hedge hogs some time before and had
learned better than to have any fuss with them.

When they set out in the morning Samson was wont to say to the little
lad, who generally sat beside him: "Well, my boy, what's the good word
this morning?" Whereupon Joe would say, parrot like:

"God help us all and make His face to shine upon us."

"Well said!" his father would answer, and so the day's journey began.

Often, near its end, they came to some lonely farmhouse. Always Samson
would stop and go to the door to ask about the roads, followed by little
Joe and Betsey with secret hopes. One of these hopes was related to
cookies and maple sugar and buttered bread and had been cherished since
an hour of good fortune early in the trip and encouraged by sundry
good-hearted women along the road. Another was the hope of seeing a
baby--mainly, it should be said, the hope of Betsey. Joe's interest was
merely an echo of hers. He regarded babies with an open mind, as it were,
for the opinions