The youngest male member of our Kansas party, hardly more than a boy, was possessor of a peculiar psychical faculty—very fortunately for us during all our troublous experiences in the territory. It was a modest gift, but an exceedingly useful one to us under the exceptional circumstances in which we often found ourselves, and this not alone to its owner, but to the whole company. It cannot be better designated, in brief, than as the faculty of "finding the way," the term usually employed in speaking of it. It probably will not lessen the interest of the reader in the matter if he is here told that the writer of this account himself was the happy possessor of this useful power. From a boy, a mere child, he may say, it was known among his playmates that he could lead them safely and surely to any place or object, when there was doubt about its locality, and could also discover the whereabouts of things lost. The shyness of the boy led him to keep his gift in the background. In Kansas it was as suddenly as remarkably made prominent perforce. It came into use the first day after we set out on our journey over the prairie. We had not gone far from the borders of civilization,—only far enough for its objects to be out of view,—when our whole caravan of travelers, their teams, horses, oxen, and wagons, came to a full stop. The trail over the prairie branched into two, and all were in doubt which was the right one to take. The clouds had shut in the sun, and the boundless prairie stretched out on all sides, with not an object, house or tree, hill, or even a rock, in view, as a landmark by which we could aim our course. One of the party, with a little experience in traveling on the prairie, warned us that an error made here might mislead us a whole day's journey. The situation began to be a little distressing; whereupon the older brother of the psychic boy said: "Call up my brother. He will tell you which trail to take." Accordingly, the boy was summoned to the front; and to the older heads, waiting there with amused smiles on their faces for the decision, he pointed out what, in his belief, was the right trail. Being wholly in doubt, they, with their smiles deepening to laughter, said they might as well follow the trail he indicated. It turned out to be the correct one. During the following ten or a dozen days' journey, as many times at least the youth was summoned to the front, and his psychical faculty put to the test. Its possessor was made happy, and his companions were equally gratified, that his power in no instance failed him. These trails, mere wagon-tracks across the country, ran in almost all directions, crosswise, parallel, and at all angles, and were enough to puzzle the very elect,—the elect being in this instance the psychic youth. The earnest wish to find the way in any case—and the stronger and more earnest the wish the better—seemed to be a sort of mainspring to the action of the power to insure its success.