nklin sat silent for a few moments, musingly staring out of the
window, and listening, without active consciousness of the fact, to the
music of the singing bird which came from somewhere without. At length
he rose and turned toward the elder man.

"If you please, judge," said he, "get the committee appointed for
to-night if you can. I'll take the examination now."

"Yes? You are in a hurry!"

"Then to-morrow I'll go over and say good-bye to my sister; and the
next day I think I'll follow the wagons West. I've not much to put in
a wagon, so I can go by rail. The road's away west of the Missouri
now, and my letter comes from the very last station, at the head of the
track."

"So?" said the Judge. "Well, that ought to be far enough, sure, if you
go clean to the jumping-off place. Goin' to leave your sweetheart
behind you, eh?"

Franklin laughed. "Well, I don't need face that hardship," said he,
"for I haven't any sweetheart."

"Ought to have," said the judge. "You're old enough. I was just
twenty-two years old when I was married, an' I had just one hundred
dollars to my name. I sent back to Vermont for my sweetheart, an' she
came out, an' we were married right here. I couldn't afford to go back
after her, so she came out to me. An' I reckon," added he, with a
sense of deep satisfaction, "that she hasn't never regretted it."

"Well, I don't see how love and law can go together," said Franklin
sagely.

"They don't," said the judge tersely. "When you get so that you see a
girl's face a-settin' on the page of your law book in front of you, the
best thing you can do is to go marry the girl as quick as the Lord'll
let you. It beats the world, anyhow, how some fellows get mixed up,
and let a woman hinder 'em in their work. Now, in my case, I never had
any such a trouble."

"And I hope I never shall," said Franklin.

"Well, see that you don't. You hit it close when you said that love
an' law don't go together. Don't try to study 'em both at the same
time; that's my advice, an' I don't charge you anything for it, seeing
it's you." With a grin at his little jest, Judge Bradley turned back
to his desk and to his little world.

CHAPTER VII

THE NEW WORLD

Franklin crossed the Missouri River, that dividing stream known to a
generation of Western men simply as "the River," and acknowledged as the
boundary between the old and the new, the known and the untried. He
passed on through well-settle