But when the settlers reached home and found amusement and some little excitement in the digging up of their household treasures and putting things in place once more, the thought of leaving this home in the Far West obtruded itself rather unpleasantly on the minds of all of them, although nobody spoke of what each thought. Oscar had hidden his precious violin high up among the rafters of the cabin, being willing to lose it only if the cabin were burned. There was absolutely no other place where it would be safe to leave it. He climbed to the loft overhead and brought it forth with great glee, laid his cheek lovingly on its body and played a familiar air. Engrossed in his music, he played on and on until he ran into the melody of "Home, Sweet Home," to which he had added many curious and artistic variations. "Don't play that, Oscar; you make me homesick!" cried Charlie, with a suspicious moisture in his eyes. "It was all very well for us to hear that when this was the only home we had or expected to have; but daddy and Uncle Charlie have set us to thinking about the home in Illinois, and that will make us all homesick, I really believe." "Here is all my 'funny business' wasted," cried Sandy. "No Indian came to read my comic letter, after all. I suppose the mice and crickets must have found some amusement in it; I saw any number of them scampering away when I opened the door; but I guess they are the only living things that have been here since we went away." "Isn't it queer that we should be gone like this for nearly two days," said Oscar, "leaving everything behind us, and come back and know that nobody has been any nearer to the place than we have, all the time? I can't get used to it." "My little philosopher," said his Uncle Charlie, "we are living in the wilderness; and if you were to live here always, you would feel, by and by, that every newcomer was an interloper; you would resent the intrusion of any more settlers here, interfering with our freedom and turning out their cattle to graze on the ranges that seem to be so like our own, now. That's what happens to frontier settlers, everywhere." "Why, yes," said Sandy, "I s'pose we should all be like that man over on the Big Blue that Mr. Fuller tells about, who moved away when a newcomer took up a claim ten miles and a half from him, because, as he thought, the people were getting too thick. For my part, I am willing to have this part of Kansas crowded to within, say, a mile and a half of us, and no more. Hey, Charlie?" [Illustration: "HOME, SWEET HOME."]