firm; and I could not do business
on his principles," said Mr. Clarence, flushing up to his brow.

"No; I suppose you could not," said Cora, meditatively; and then she was
sorry that she had said anything that might imply a reproach to the
good-humored uncle she had left behind.

"Still, I said nothing about a dissolution of partnership until Fabian
complained that I, or my policy, was a dead weight around his neck,
dragging him down from the most magnificent flights to mere sordid
drudgery. Then I proposed that we should dissolve partnership. And he
said he was sorry. And I believe he was; but also glad, inconsistent as
that seems. For he was sorry I could not come into his policy, and stay
in the firm; but since I could not so agree with him, he was relieved
when I proposed to withdraw from it. We disagreed, my dear Cora, but we
did not fall out; we parted good friends and brothers with tears in our
eyes. Poor little Violet cried a good deal. But you know she has such a
tender heart, poor child!--Look at that herd of deer, Cora, standing on
the top of that swell of the land to the right, and actually gazing at
the trail without a motion or a panic. I hope nobody will shoot at
them!" exclaimed Mr. Clarence, suddenly breaking off in his discourse to
point to the denizens of the thicket and the prairie, until upon some
sudden impulse the whole herd turned and bounded away.

So they fared on through that glorious autumn day--over the vast,
rolling, solitary prairie--now rising to a smooth, gradual elevation
that revealed the circle of the whole horizon where it met the sky; now
descending into a wide, shallow hollow, where the rising ground around
inclosed them as in an amphitheater; but everywhere along the trail, the
prairie grass, dried and burnished by the autumn's suns and winds,
burned like gold on the hills and bronze in the hollows, giving a
singularly beautiful effect in light and shade of mingling metallic
hues.

At noon the captain ordered a halt, and all the teams were drawn up in a
line; and all the men got out to feed and water the horses and mules,
and to prepare their own dinner.

They were now beside a clear, deep, narrow stream, a tributary of the
Kansas River, running through a picturesque valley, carpeted with long
grass, and bordered with low, well-wooded hills on either side. The
burnished gold and bronze of the long dried grass on the river's brim,
dotted here and there with a late scarlet pra