A few hours sufficed for all needful preparations, and then, with his wife and children in his wagon, Parker mounted one of the horses and drove off for the village of A--, distant a little over ten miles. As they moved away the mother's eyes were turned back upon the little mound of earth beneath which slept the body of her precious child, and remained fixed upon that one spot until by intervening trees all was hidden from her sight. Then her eyes closed, and she leaned her head down against the side of the wagon, while her arm tightened its hold of the babe that was sleeping on her bosom. For a long time she remained lost to all that was around her. Years afterward she said to a friend that the severest trial of her whole life was in leaving her child alone in that wild, desolate place. It seemed as if the little one must feel the desertion. At the town of A-- Parker and his family obtained accommodations in a poor tavern, where they remained for six weeks, during which time every one suffered more or less severely from fevers, contracted in the poisoned atmosphere in which they had been residing. During the time that Parker remained at A-- he obtained more information in regard to Western life, and the prospects of a man like himself getting ahead, as a farmer on wild lands than he had ever before had. He learned, too, some particulars about his own farm, of which he was before ignorant. All along the river upon which it was situated, the fall sickness swept off every new-comer, and was in very many instances fatal to the oldest residents. He was assured that if he went back there to live before frost set in, it would be almost certain death. The loss of his oldest and best-beloved child; the bad location of his farm; and the new and more correct views he had received on the subject of Western life, completely opened the eyes of Parker to the folly he had committed. "If I could make any thing like a fair sale of my farm, I think I would let it go, and return to the East," he said to his wife, after they had all recovered from the worst effect of the fevers from which they had been suffering. "If you could do as well at the East, Benjamin, I think we would all be happier there," Rachel replied, in her usual quiet way. Her husband did not notice that the tears sprang instantly to her eyes, nor did he know with what a quick throb her heart answered to his words.