aised his head for me to kiss his lips. While he slept,
his mother sewed and talked with me. She had known my parents on the
plains, and now let me sit at her feet, giving me her workbox, that I
might look at its bobbins of different-colored thread and the pretty
needle-book. When I told her that the things looked a little like
mother's and that sometimes mother let me take the tiniest bit of her
wax, she gave me permission to take a tiny taste of that which I held
in my hand to see if it was like that which I remembered.

Only she, the baby, and I sat down to tea, yet she said that she was
glad she had company, for baby's papa was away with Captain Fremont,
and she was lonesome.

After I learned that she would have to stay until he came back, I was
troubled, and told what I had heard in the night. She assured me that
those in charge of the Fort heard every day all that was going on for
miles and miles around, and that if they should learn that fighting
Indians were coming, they would take all the white people and the good
Indians into the fort, and then shoot the bad ones with the cannon that
peeped through its embrasures.

The dainty meal and her motherly talk kept me a happy child until I
heard the footsteps of the Lennox boys. I knew they were coming for me,
and that I should have to sleep in that dark room where I had been so
afraid. Quickly slipping from my chair, under the table, and hiding
behind my new friend's dress skirt, I begged her not to let them know
where I was, and please, to let me stay with her all night. I listened
as she sent the boys back to tell their mother that she would keep me
until morning, adding that she would step in and explain matters after
she put her baby to bed. Before I went to sleep she heard me say my
prayers and kissed me good-night.

When I awoke next morning, I was not in her house, but in Mrs. Lennox's
wagon, on the way to Sonoma.

The distance between the Fort and Sonoma was only about eighty miles,
yet the heavy roads and the frequent showers kept us on the journey
more than a week. It was still drizzling when we reached the town and
Mrs. Lennox learned where the Brunners lived. I had been told that they
would be looking for me, and I expected to go to them at once.

As we approached the west bank of the creek, which winds south past the
town, we could see the branches on the trees in grandma's dooryard
swaying. Yet we could not reach there, because a heavy mountain st