s a free-State man! Wasn't that funny!

It was a beautifully bright afternoon, and Sandy, gathering his
belongings together, started up the river road on a brisk canter. The
old horse was a hard trotter, and when he slackened down from a
canter, poor Sandy shook in every muscle, and his teeth chattered as
if he had a fit of ague. But whenever the lad contrived to urge his
steed into an easier gait he got on famously. The scenery along the
Republican Fork is (or was) very agreeable to the eye. Long slopes of
vivid green stretched off in every direction, their rolling sides
dropping into deep ravines through which creeks, bordered with dense
growths of alder, birch, and young cottonwood, meandered. The sky was
blue and cloudless, and, as the boy sped along the breezy uplands, the
soft and balmy air fanning his face, he sung and whistled to express
the fervor of his buoyant spirits. He was a hearty and a happy boy.

Suddenly he came to a fork in the road which he had not noticed when
he came down that way in the morning. For a moment he was puzzled by
the sight. Both were broad and smooth tracks over the grassy prairie,
and both rose and fell over the rolling ground; only, one led to the
left and somewhat southerly, and the other to the right. "Pshaw!"
muttered Sandy, and he paused and rubbed his head for an idea. "That
left-hand road must strike off to some ford lower down on the Fork
than I have ever been. But I never heard of any ford below ours."

[Illustration: FILLING IN THE CHINKS IN THE WALLS OF THE LOG-CABIN.]

With that, his keen eyes noticed that the right-hand road was cut and
marked with the many hoof-tracks of a flock of sheep. He argued to
himself that the sheep-drivers had told him that they were going to
California. The California road led up the bank of the Republican Fork
close to the trail that led him from Younkins's to the ford across the
river. The way was plain; so, striking his spur into the old sorrel's
side, he dashed on up the right-hand road, singing gayly as he went.

Absorbed in the mental calculation as to the number of days that it
would take that flock of sheep to reach California, the boy rode on,
hardly noticing the landmarks by the way, or taking in anything but
the general beauty of the broad and smiling landscape over which the
yellow light of the afternoon sun, sinking in the west, poured a flood
of splendor. Slackening his speed as he passed a low and sunken little
round valley