“Well, friends, long as there’s no damage done, I don’t see any use in being so excited. As to my guns and dogs, you can have them in welcome; but as to my company, I have promised the Judge here to drive him and his wife over to see their house. And I expect they will want me to haul the plunder over too—won’t you, Judge?” Mark Sutherland bowed. After a little discussion, they urged “the Judge” to join their hunt, and Rosalie privately squeezed Mark’s arm in disapproval. Mark declined; and, after a little more altercation, the visitors at length departed, with three or four of the bachelor boarders, who quaffed each a “hasty” cup of coffee and followed. When this little disturbance was over— “I did not know,” said Mr. Sutherland, “that the wild denizens of the forest ever ventured so near the settlements.” “No more they don’t,” replied the host; “only this go, I s’pose, the Injuns have been hunting of ’em and druv ’em close on to the village. We’ll git shut of ’em agin after a bit.” When breakfast was over, “the Colonel” geared up the carryall to take his young guests across the prairie to Wolf’s Grove. It was a fresh, bright, blithe morning, scarcely seven o’clock, when they set out, and the prairie still glistened with dew. There was no road to Wolf’s Grove; but the driver took a beeline over the level ground, and the wheels of the carryall tracked deep through the sedgy grass and gorgeous wild flowers. “It looks strange to me,” said Rosalie, “to see these glorious flowers—which, if they were in our eastern gardens, we should cherish with so much care—driven down and crushed by thousands under our wheels.” “It is but the sign of the fall of the forest before the advancing march of immigration,” observed Mark. “It reminds me, somehow, of the triumphal entries of the sanguinary old conquerors of ancient times, whose chariot wheels passed ruthlessly over the fallen, the dead, and the dying.” Mark smiled at her fancy, and the driver took his pipe out of his mouth, and turned and looked at her in perplexity. “But, Rose, when you look around you at the countless millions of flowers left blooming—nay, I mean to say, when you think of the countless millions of trees left standing—does it not give you an exultant sense of the exhaustless wealth, the boundless resources of our prairies and forests?”