spite of her threadbare
clothes, she had a neat and cleanly look and gentle manners. The youngest
was a boy of four. They were a pathetic trio.

Joe had been telling them about Santa Claus and showing them a jack-knife
which had come down the chimney in his pack at Christmas time and
describing a dress of his mother's that had gold and silver buttons
on it. The little six-year-old girl had asked him many questions about
his mother and had stood for some moments looking up into Sarah's face.
The girl timidly felt the dress and hair of the woman and touched her
wedding ring.

"Come and wash your faces and hands," Joe demanded as soon as the water
came.

This they did while he poured from a dipper.

"Nice people always wash before they eat," he reminded them.

Then he showed them his bear stick, with the assurance that it had killed
a hedge hog, omitting the unimportant fact that his father had wielded
it. The ferocity of hedge hogs was a subject on which he had large
information. He told how one of their party had come near getting his
skin sewed on a barn door. A hedge hog had come and asked Sambo if he
would have some needles. Sambo had never seen a hedge hog, so he said
that he guessed he would.

Then the hedge hog said: "Help yourself."

Sambo went to take some and just got his face full of 'em so it looked
like a head o' barley. They had to be took out with a pinchers or they'd
'a' sewed his skin on to a barn door. That was their game. They tried to
sew everybody's skin on a barn door.

Every night the hedge hog came around and said: "Needles, needles,
anybody want some needles."

Now Sambo always answered: "No thank you, I've had enough."

"Where's your mother?" Sarah asked of the ten-year-old girl.

"Dead. Died when my little brother was born."

"Who takes care of you?"

"Father and--God. Father says God does most of it."

"Oh dear!" Sarah exclaimed, with a look of pity.

They had a good dinner of fresh biscuit and honey and venison and eggs
and tea. While they were eating Samson told Brimstead of the land of
plenty.

After dinner, while Brimstead was bringing the team, one of his children,
the blonde, pale, tattered little girl of six, climbed into the wagon
seat and sat holding a small rag doll, which Sarah had given her. When
they were ready to go she stubbornly refused to get down.

"I'm goin' away," she said. "I'm goin' aw-a-ay off to find my mother. I
don't like this place. There ain't n