declared. "Some day when the West is full of people, and
dowered with prosperity, it may remember the men who built the highway
for the feet of trade to run in. And the West may yet measure its
greatness somewhat by the honesty and faithfulness of the merchant of
the frontier, and more by the courage and persistence of the boys who
drove the ox-teams across the plains. Don't forget that you yourselves
are State-builders now."

He spoke earnestly, but his words meant little to me. I was looking out
toward the wide-sweeping Kaw and thinking of the journey I must make,
and wondering if I should ever feel at ease in the society of women.
Wondering, too, what I should say, and how I should really take care of
"Little Lees," who had crossed the plains with us almost a decade ago;
the girl who had held my hand tightly one night at old Fort Bent when
the shadow had slipped across the moon and filled the silvery court with
a gray, ghostly light.

That night the old heart-hunger of childhood came back to me, the
visions of the day-dreaming little boy that were almost forgotten in the
years that had brought me to young manhood. And clearly again, as when I
heard Uncle Esmond's voice that night on the tableland above the valley
of the Santa Fe, I heard his gentle words:

"Sometimes the things we long for in our dreams we must fight for, and
even die for, that those who come after us may be the better for our
having them."

But these thoughts passed with the night, and in my youth and
inexperience I took on a spirit of fatherly importance as I went down to
St. Ann's to safeguard a little girl on her way through the Kansas
territory to the Missouri River.

It had been a beautiful day, and there was a freshness in the soft
evening breeze, and an up-springing sweetness from the prairies. A
shower had passed that way an hour before, and the spirit of growing
things seemed to fill the air with a voiceless music.

Just at sunset the stage from the north put me down in front of St.
Ann's Academy in the little Osage Mission village on the Neosho.

A tall nun, with commanding figure and dignified bearing, left the
church steps across the road and came slowly toward me.

"I am looking for Mother Bridget, the head of this school," I said,
lifting my hat.

"I am Mother Bridget." The voice was low and firm. One could not imagine
disobedience under her rule.

"I come from Mr. Esmond Clarenden, to act as escort for a little girl,
Eloi