An instant afterward Ned was being carried over the prairie with all the speed his horse could be induced to put forth. He did not know which way he was going, for he dared not look up to see. He sat with his hat over his face, his head bowed over to his horse’s neck, and his hands twisted in the animal’s mane, while George sat up, braving it all and leading him to a place of refuge. It seemed to Ned that they were a very long time in reaching the timber, and that he should certainly freeze to death before that mile and a half of prairie could be crossed; but he didn’t, and neither did he afterward feel any bad effects from what he suffered during his cold ride. He found that Zeke, having been warned by signs he could easily read that the norther was coming, had moved the camp to a more sheltered locality, and that he had a roaring fire going and a pot of hot coffee on the coals. Ned drank a good share of that hot coffee, and forgot to grumble over it, as he usually did. George showed him the way home as soon as the storm abated, and there Ned resolved to stay, having fully made up his mind that there was no fun to be seen in camp-life. Ned was more lonely and discontented than ever after that. It was harder work to pass the days in doing nothing than it was to stand behind a counter, selling dry-goods; and that was what he had done before he came to Texas. There was literally no way in which he could enjoy himself. Books, which were his cousin’s delight, Ned did not care for; there was not game enough in the country to pay for the trouble of hunting for it; the boys in the settlement were a lot of boors, who would not notice him, because he was so far above them; and all Ned could do was to spend the day in loitering about the house, with his hands in his pockets. “If I only had some of the jolly fellows here that I used to run with in Foxboro’!” said Ned to himself, one day, after he had spent an hour or two in wandering from room to room, in the vain hope of finding something to interest him. “Wouldn’t we turn this old house upside down! They all promised to come and see me, but I know they won’t do it, for they’ll never be able to save money enough to pay their fare. If I ever see them, I shall have to send them the money to bring them here, and I——Well, now, why couldn’t I do that? It’s a splendid idea!” Ned, all life and animation now, hurried to his room to act upon his splendid idea, while it was yet fresh in his mind. He wrote a long letter to one of the cronies, Gus Robbins by name, whom he had left behind in Foxboro’, giving a glowing description of his new home, recounting, at great length, a thrilling hunting adventure he had heard from the lips of George’s herdsman, and of which he made himself the hero, instead of Zeke, and wound up by urging Gus and his brother to come on and pay him a long visit.