My Evelyn is not to fail in her promise to come back to me to-morrow. I have not yet completed the reading of the manuscript, though I hope to do so to-night, if a late vigil shall enable me to accomplish that purpose. I have asked Arthur to let me sleep in the nursery to-night, if I finish the reading in time to sleep at all. So I can sit up as late as I please without fear of disturbing him. Poor fellow, he is working too hard and thinking too hard even for his magnificent strength. But whether I finish your manuscript to-night or not, Evelyn dear, I have read enough of it to know that your life-story only confirms the judgment I had formed of your character, and draws you nearer to my sympathies. So come home in the morning, and don’t disappoint me. When she took up the manuscript again, this is what she read:— Chapter the Twelfth WE travelled by the railroad as far as it went. Then we had to get into a big wagon, drawn by six mules. The country we passed through was wild, and quite uninhabited, I think. At any rate, we saw no houses, and no people except now and then a little party of Indians. There were no roads, only dim trails, and there were no bridges, so that it sometimes took us three or four days to get across a river. We carried all our provisions in the wagon, and when we stopped for the night we cooked our suppers by great big fires, built out of doors. It was usually about nightfall when we pitched our camp, and so long as our way lay through the woods, I used to lie awake for hours every night, looking up and watching the light from the camp-fire as it played hide and seek among the great trees. When at last we got out of the woods and began travelling over a vast prairie, the camping was far less pleasant, particularly when a norther blew, making it bitter cold. Still, I insisted on sleeping out of doors, although Campbell had fitted up a cosy little bedroom for me in the big wagon. That was because it was Campbell’s wagon. Out of doors I felt a sort of freedom, while if I even looked into the wagon I realised that I was that man’s prisoner. He was trying to be good to me then. That is to say, he was trying to make me think him kind and to make me like him. Among other things, he gave me a horse to ride on. He had intended at first that I should travel in the wagon, but I would not do that. I preferred to walk, instead. So, after the second day, when we met a party of Indians, he bought a horse of them and gave it to me to ride. It was a vicious brute, bent upon breaking my neck, but I knew how to ride, and within a day or two I had taught the animal to like me a little, and to obey me altogether. I had no saddle, of course, but I never did like a saddle, and I don’t, even now, as you know. So I got one of the men to strap a blanket on my horse’s back with a surcingle, and I rode upon that.