om_, with writing-desk, book-shelf,
table, all of the missionary's making, does for reception and dining
room, study, and parlor. Behind it is the kitchen, with ingenious
cupboards; and opening off from this the bedroom, five by seven, with
bedstead and washstand, both home-made, and both nailed fast to the
wall. Altogether a snug little, tight little house, going a long way
to content one with being a bachelor.

And now we hitch up Golddust, and are off through the glorious yellow
light and purple haze of this September afternoon. Golddust is the
missionary's horse, and evidently the missionary's weakness. His name,
and as his owner thinks his speed, his spirit, and other
characteristics, he inherits from his sire, Old Golddust of Western
racing fame. Old Golddust, if he has transmitted his characteristics,
must have been a horse of singular modesty, for his son continues
resolutely unwilling throughout this drive to make any display of his
nobler qualities. By an extraordinary piece of good fortune, due to an
evil but unfair report of Golddust in his young days, "they didn't know
how to handle him." the missionary had bought him for twenty-five
dollars! One result of the deal has been an unlimited confidence on
the part of the missionary in his own horse-dealing instinct. It is
quite true that Golddust has not always shown his present mild and
trustful disposition. Indeed, the missionary goes on to tell how,
being loaned for a day to a brother missionary up west, the horse had
returned in the evening much excited, but not much the worse, with a
pair of shafts dangling at his heels. The missionary brother did not
appear till the day following, and then in a shocking bad temper. "He
was a Methodist brother, and didn't understand horses"; and the happy,
far-away look in the face of his present owner led me to doubt whether
that day's exploit had lowered Golddust in his estimation.

Meantime we are drinking deep of the delights of this mellow afternoon.
On either side of our trail lie yellow harvest fields, narrow, like
those of eastern Canada, and set in frames of green poplar bluffs that
rustle and shimmer under the softly going wind. Then on through
_scrub_ we go, bumping over roots and pitching through holes, till we
suddenly push out from the scrub, and before us lie the Marshes. There
they sweep for miles away, with their different grasses waving and
whispering under the steady blowing breeze, first th