at the
seeming bushes peering up across the street were really the tops of tall
trees with their roots in the side of the bluff not half way to the
bottom.

From our west window the green glory of the plains spread out to the
baths of sunset. No wonder this Kansas land is life of my life. The sea
is to me a wavering treachery, but these firm prairies are the joy of my
memory.

Our house was of stone with every corner rounded like a turret wall. It
was securely built against the winter winds that swept that bluff when
the Kansas blizzard unchained its fury, for it stood where it caught the
full wrath of the elements. It caught, too, the splendor of all the
sunrise beyond the mist-filled valley, and the full moon in the level
east above the oak treetops made a dream of chastened glory like the
silver twilight gleams in Paradise.

"I want to watch the world coming and going," my father said when his
house was finished; "and it is coming down that Santa Fe trail. It is
State-making that is begun here. The East doesn't understand it yet,
outside of New England. And these Missourians, Lord pity them! they
think they can kill human freedom with a bullet, like thrusting daggers
into the body of Julius Caesar to destroy the Roman Empire. What do they
know of the old Puritan blood, and the strength of the grip of a
Massachusetts man? Heaven knows where they came from, these Missouri
ruffians; but," he added, "the devil has it arranged where they will go
to."

"Oh, John, be careful," exclaimed Aunt Candace.

"Are you afraid of them, Candace?"

"Well, no, I don't believe I am," replied my aunt.

She was not one of those blustering north-northwest women. She squared
her life by the admonition of Isaiah, "In quietness and in confidence
shall be your strength." But she was a Baronet, and although they have
their short-comings, fear seems to have been left out of their make-up.

CHAPTER II

JEAN PAHUSCA

In even savage bosoms
There are longings, yearnings, strivings
For the good they comprehend not.

--LONGFELLOW.

The frontier broke all lines of caste. There was no aristocrat,
autocrat, nor plutocrat in Springvale; but the purest democracy was
among the children. Life was before us; we loved companionship, and the
same dangers threatened us all. The first time I saw Marjie she asked,
"Are you afraid of Indians?" They were the terror of her life. Even
to-day the mere press despatch of an Indian uprisin