d replied: "I know it was bad manners, but the last
thing I heard the minister say, was 'Rest for the weary.' I thought
that was meant for me. Leastways, I found rest for the weary right
off, and I guess there was no harm done."

With Monday morning came sunshine and a clear and bracing air. Even
Charlie's face wore a cheerful look, the first that he had put on
since arriving in St. Louis, although now and again his heart quaked
as he heard the hotel porter's voice in the hall roaring out the time
of departure for the trains that now began to move from the city in
all directions. They had studied the railroad advertisements and
time-tables to some purpose, and had discovered that they must cross
to East St. Louis, on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River, and
there take a train for the northern part of the State, where Dixon is
situated. But they must first see their Uncle Oscar, borrow the needed
money from him, settle with the steamboat people and the hotel, and
then get to the railroad station by eleven o'clock in the forenoon. It
was a big morning's work.

They were at their uncle's store before he arrived from his suburban
home; and, while they waited, they whisperingly discussed the
question, Who should ask for the money? Charlie was at first disposed
to put this duty on Sandy; but the other two boys were very sure that
it would not look well for the youngest of the party to be the leader
on an occasion so important; and Charlie was appointed spokesman.

Mr. Oscar Bryant came in. He was very much surprised to see three
strange lads drawn up in a row to receive him. And he was still more
taken aback when he learned that they were his nephews, on their way
home from Kansas. He had heard of his brother's going out to Kansas,
and he had not approved of it at all. He was inclined to think that,
on the whole, it would be better for Kansas to have slavery than to do
without it. A great many other people in St. Louis thought the same
way, at that time, although some of them changed their minds later
on.

Mr. Oscar Bryant was a tall, spruce-looking, and severe man in
appearance. His hair was gray and brushed stiffly back from his
forehead; and his precise, thin, white whiskers were cut "just like a
minister's," as Sandy afterwards declared; and when he said that going
to Kansas to make it a free State was simply the rankest kind of
folly, Charlie's heart sunk, and he thought to himself that the chance
of borrowin