e the child for it--all the Sherwins are that way!"

As for Ann Mary, she sat up quite straight and looked as pretty as
possible when the little company rode off. After all, she had been
"declining" only about a month, and people had vigorous constitutions in
those days.

You may think it odd that she was not afraid to make the long journey, but
there are advantages in being of a dependent nature. Hannah had always
done everything for her, and had kept her safe from harm. Hannah was with
her now, so there was nothing to fear. She left all that to Hannah, who
did it, poor child, with the greatest thoroughness!

Now that the excitement of overcoming Hillsboro opposition was passed; now
that they were really started, with herself as sole leader and guide,
responsibility fell like a black cloud upon her young heart. There was
nothing she did _not_ fear--for Ann Mary, of course--from wolves and
Indians to fatigue or thunderstorms.

A dozen times that day, as they paced slowly over the rough trail, she
asked her sister anxiously if she were not too hot or too cold, or too
tired or too faint, imitating as best she could the matter and manner of
the doctoring old women. However, Ann Mary surprised herself, as well as
Hannah, by being none of the uncomfortable things that her sister kept
suggesting to her she might very well be. It was perfect June weather,
they were going over some of the loveliest country in the world, and Ann
Mary was out of doors for the first time in four weeks or more.

She "kept up" wonderfully well, and they made good time, reaching by dusk,
as they had hoped to do, a farmer's house on the downward dip of the
mountain to the east. Here, their story being told, they were hospitably
received, and Ann Mary was clapped into the airless inner room and fed
with gruel and dipped toast. But she had had fresh air and exercise all
day, and a hearty meal of cold venison and corn bread at their noonday
rest, so she slept soundly.

The next day they went across a wide, hilly valley, up another range of
low mountains, and down on the other side. The country was quite strange
to them, and somehow, before they knew it, they were not on the road
recommended to them by their hosts of the night before. Night overtook
them when they were still, as the phrase has come down in our family, "in
a miserable, dismal place of wood."

Hannah's teeth chattered for very terror as she saw their plight; but she
spoke cheerfully