y
steps in order to get a view of her face. When I gave up this illusion,
I still prayed that Keseberg would send for me some day, and let me
know her end, and give me a last message. I wanted his call to me to be
voluntary, so that I might know that his words were true. These hopes
and prayers were sacred, even from Georgia.

On the twenty-fourth of March, 1856, brother Ben took us all to pioneer
quarters on Rancho de los Cazadores, where their growing interests
required the personal attention of the three brothers. There we became
familiar with the pleasures, and also the inconveniences and hardships
of life on a cattle ranch. We were twenty miles from town, church, and
school; ten miles from the post office; and close scrutiny far and wide
disclosed but one house in range. Our supply of books was meagre, and
for knowledge of current events, we relied on _The Sacramento Union_,
and on the friends who came to enjoy the cattleman's hospitality.

My sweetest privilege was an occasional visit to cousin Frances Bond,
my mother's niece, who, with her husband and child, had settled on a
farm about twelve miles from us. She also had grown up a motherless
girl, but had spent a part of her young ladyhood at our home in
Illinois. She had helped my mother to prepare for our long journey and
would have crossed the plains with us had her father granted her wish.
She was particularly fond of us "three little ones" whom she had
caressed in babyhood. She related many pleasing incidents connected
with those days, and spoke feelingly, yet guardedly, of our experiences
in the mountains. Like Elitha, she hoped we would forget them, and as
she watched me cheerfully adapting myself to new surroundings, she
imagined that time and circumstances were dimming the past from my
memory.

She did not understand me. I was light-hearted because I was old enough
to appreciate the blessings that had come to me; old enough to look
ahead and see the pure, intelligent womanhood opening to me; and
trustful enough to believe that my expectations in life would be
realized. So I gathered counsel and comfort from the lips of that
sympathetic cousin, and loved her word pictures of the home where I was
born.

Nor could change of circumstances wean my grateful thoughts from
Grandpa and Grandma Brunner. At times, I seemed to listen for the sound
of his voice, and to hear hers so near and clear that in the night, I
often started up out of sleep in answer to he