lthough my father had
timely notice, so that he was able to put my mother and us into one of
the waggons, with the most valuable part of his household property, the
rest was enveloped in flames shortly after we had left the house. The
next day not a building, not a fence, remained standing. The whole farm
was a scene of black desolation.

"We have had a pretty strong hint to move westward, which I have long
been thinking of doing," said my father. "Many who have gone to the
Pacific coast have become possessed of wealth in half the time we have
taken to get this farm in order. What do you say, Mary?"

Our mother was always ready to do whatever he wished, although she would
rather have remained in the part of the country where she was born and
still had many friends.

"I should say, let us go eastward, and purchase a small farm in some
more civilized district; we can then send our children to school, and be
able to see them during the holidays," she observed.

"We ourselves can give them such schooling as they require," replied my
father. "You will make Clarice as accomplished as yourself, and I will
take good care of Ralph. It is not book learning a lad requires to get
on in this country. He is a good hand at shooting and fishing,
understands all sorts of farm work, and is as good a rider as any boy of
his age. He will forget all these accomplishments if we go eastward;
whereas if we move westward, he will improve still more. And as he is as
sharp as a Yankee, he will do well enough in whatever line he follows."

The truth was, my father had made up his mind to go in the direction he
proposed, and was not to be turned aside by any arguments, however
sensible, which my mother might offer. So it was settled that we should
make a long journey across the prairie. As for the difficulties and
dangers to be encountered, or the hardships to which my mother and
Clarice would be exposed, he did not take these into consideration.
There are people with minds so constituted that they only see one side
of a question; and my father was unhappily one of these.

He proposed to unite himself with some respectable party of emigrants,
who would travel together for mutual protection. He considered that they
might thus set at defiance any band of Indians, however numerous, which
they might encounter.

The two farms were no doubt much inferior in value to what they would
have been with buildings, outhouses and fencings, standing crops a