eaving Mullett's he met a drove of sheep. The drivers were
two men and a boy of his own age, mounted on horseback and carrying
their provisions, apparently, strapped behind them. When he asked them
where they were going, they surlily replied that they were going to
California. That would take them right up the road that he had come
down, Sandy thought to himself. And he wondered if the boys at home
would see the interesting sight of five hundred sheep going up the
Republican Fork, bound for California.

He reached the fort before noon; and, with a heart beating high
with pleasure, he rode into the grounds and made his way to the
well-remembered sutler's store where he had bought the candy,
months before. He had a few pennies of his own, and he mentally
resolved to spend these for raisins. Sandy had a "sweet tooth", but,
except for sugar and molasses, he had eaten nothing sweet since
they were last at Fort Riley on their way westward.

It was with a feeling of considerable importance that Sandy surveyed
the interior of the sutler's store. The proprietor looked curiously
at him, as if wondering why so small a boy should turn up alone in
that wilderness; and when the lad asked for letters for the families
up the river, Mullett's, Sparkins's, Battles's, Younkins's, and his
own people, the sutler said: "Be you one of them Abolitioners that
have named your place after that man Whittier, the Abolition poet?
I've hearn tell of you, and I've hearn tell of him. And he ain't no
good. Do you hear me?" Sandy replied that he heard him, and to himself
he wondered greatly how anybody, away down here, ten miles from the
new home, could possibly have heard about the name they had given to
their cabin.

Several soldiers who had been lounging around the place now went out
at the door. The sutler, looking cautiously about as if to be sure
that nobody heard him, said: "Never you mind what I said just now,
sonny. Right you are, and that man Whittier writes the right sort of
stuff. Bet yer life! I'm no Abolitioner; but I'm a free-State man, I
am, every time."

"Then what made you talk like that, just now?" asked Sandy, his
honest, freckled face glowing with righteous indignation. "If you like
Mr. John G. Whittier's poetry, why did you say he wasn't any good?"

"Policy, policy, my little man. This yere's a pro-slavery guv'ment,
and this yere is a pro-slavery post. I couldn't keep this place one
single day if they thought I was a free-Stat