ke that."

As he spoke, a long, low emigrant wagon, or "prairie schooner," drawn
by three yoke of dun-colored oxen, toiled up the road. In the wagon
was a faded-looking woman with two small children clinging to her.
Odds and ends of household furniture showed themselves over her head
from within the wagon, and strapped on behind was a coop of fowls,
from which came a melancholy cackle, as if the hens and chickens were
weary of their long journey. A man dressed in butternut-colored
homespun drove the oxen, and a boy about ten years old trudged behind
the driver. In the darkness behind these tramped a small herd of cows
and oxen driven by two other men, and a lad about the age of Oscar
Bryant. The new arrivals paused in the road, surveyed our friends from
Illinois, stopped the herd of cattle, and then the man who was driving
the wagon said, with an unmistakable New England twang, "Friends?"

"Friends, most assuredly," said Mr. Bryant, with a smile. "I guess you
have been having hard luck, you appear to be so suspicious."

"Well, we have, and that's a fact. But we're main glad to be able to
camp among friends. Jotham, unyoke the cattle after you have driven
them into the timber a piece." He assisted the woman and children to
get down from the wagon, and one of the cattle-drivers coming up,
drove the team into the woods a short distance, and the tired oxen
were soon lying down among the underbrush.

"Well, yes, we _have_ had a pretty hard time getting here. We are the
last free-State men allowed over the ferry at Parkville. Where be you
from?"

"We are from Lee County, Illinois," replied Mr. Bryant. "We came in by
the way of Parkville, too, a day or two ago; but we stopped at
Quindaro. Did you come direct from Parkville?"

[Illustration: THE YANKEE EMIGRANT.]

"Yes," replied the man. "We came up the river in the first place, on
the steamboat 'Black Eagle,' and when we got to Leavenworth, a big
crowd of Borderers, seeing us and another lot of free-State men on the
boat, refused to let us land. We had to go down the river again. The
captain of the boat kicked up a great fuss about it, and wanted to put
us ashore on the other side of the river; but the Missouri men
wouldn't have it. They put a 'committee,' as they called the two men,
on board the steamboat, and they made the skipper take us down the
river."

"How far down did you go?" asked Bryant, his face reddening with
anger.

"Well, we told the committee that w