e of the St. Lawrence he
had spent many a happy, summer day. Three years had passed since that
fateful morning on the prairie. Through the winters he had lived in a
comfortable hunter's camp on the shore of Lake Placid. Summers he had
wandered with a guide and canoe through the lakes and rivers of the
wilderness hunting and fishing and reading the law books which he had
borrowed from Judge Fine of Ogdensburg. Each summer he worked down the
Oswegatchie to that point for a visit with his new friends. The history
of every week had been written to Bim and her letters had reached him at
the points where he was wont to rest in his travels. The lovers had not
lost their ardor. Theirs was the love "that hopes and endures and is
patient."

On a day in June, 1841, he boarded a steamboat at Ogdensburg on his way
to Chicago. He arrived in the evening and found Samson at the home of Bim
and her mother--a capacious and well-furnished house on Dearborn Street.
Bim was then a little over twenty-five years old. A letter from John
Wentworth says that she was "an exquisite bit of womanhood learned in the
fine arts of speech and dress and manner." He spoke also of her humor and
originality and of her gift for business "which amounted to absolute
genius."

The store had doubled in size under her management and with the help
of the capital of Samson and Sarah Traylor. Its wholesale and retail
business was larger than any north of St. Louis. The epidemic had seized
her toward the last of her nursing and left the marks of its scourge upon
her. It had marred her beauty but Samson writes, "the girl was still very
handsome. She was well filled out and stood as straight as an arrow and
was always dressed as neat as a pin. I fear she was a little extravagant
about that. She carried her head like a sleek, well-fed Morgan colt.
She was kind of scared to meet Harry for fear of what he'd think of those
little marks on her face but I told her not to worry."

"You are the smartest and loveliest looking creature that I ever saw in
my life," said Harry after he had held her in his arms a moment.

"But see what has happened to me--look at my face," she answered.

"It is more beautiful than ever," he said. "Those marks have doubled my
love for you. They are medals of honor better than this one that I wear."

"Then I think that I'll take you off and marry you before you have a
chance to fight another duel or find another war to go to," said Bim.
"There