e journey more," said father, "for our supper, and then we'll bivouac
right here."

Now that I was away from the buggy that was so familiar to me, and that
seemed like a little movable piece of home, I felt, as I had not felt
before, the vastness of the solitude. Above me in the rising wind tossed
the tops of the singing trees; about me stretched the soft blackness;
and beneath the dense, interlaced branches it was almost as calm and
still as in a room. I could see that the clouds were breaking and the
stars beginning to come out, and that comforted me a little.

Father was keeping up a stream of cheerful talk.

"Now, sir," he was saying to Sheridan, "stand still while I get this
harness off you. I'll tie you and blanket you, and you can lie or stand
as you please. Here's your nose-bag, with some good supper in it, and if
you don't have drink, it's not my fault. Anyway, it isn't so long since
you got a good nip at the creek."

I was watching by the faint light of the lantern, and noticing how
unnatural father and Sheridan looked. They seemed to be blocked out in a
rude kind of way, like some wooden toys I had at home.

"Here we are," said father, "like Robinson Crusoes. It was hard luck for
Robinson, not having his little girl along. He'd have had her to pick up
sticks and twigs to make a fire, and that would have been a great help
to him."

Father began breaking fallen branches over his knee, and I groped round
and filled my arms again and again with little fagots. So after a few
minutes we had a fine fire crackling in a place where it could not catch
the branches of the trees. Father had scraped the needles of the pines
together in such a way that a bare rim of earth was left all around the
fire, so that it could not spread along the ground; and presently the
coffee-pot was over the fire and bacon was sizzling in the frying-pan.
The good, hearty odours came out to mingle with the delicious scent
of the pines, and I, setting out our dishes, began to feel a happiness
different from anything I had ever known.

Pioneers and wanderers and soldiers have joys of their own--joys of
which I had heard often enough, for there had been more stories told
than read in our house. But now for the first time I knew what my
grandmother and my uncles had meant when they told me about the way they
had come into the wilderness, and about the great happiness and freedom
of those first days. I, too, felt this freedom, and it seemed t