The father smiled kindly as he looked at the flushed face and bright eyes of his boy, and took from him the paper folded to show the verses. As he read, his eyes, too, flashed and his lip trembled. "Listen to this!" he cried. "Listen to this! It is like a trumpet call!" And with a voice quivering with emotion, he began the poem,-- "We cross the prairie as of old The pilgrims crossed the sea, To make the West, as they the East, The homestead of the free!" "Something has got into my eyes," said Mr. Howell, as the last stanza was read. "Great Scott! though, how that does stir a man's blood!" And he furtively wiped the moisture from his eyes. It was time to put out the light and go to sleep, for the night now was well advanced. But Mr. Bryant, thoroughly aroused, read and re-read the lines aloud. [Illustration: IN CAMP AT QUINDARO. THE POEM OF "THE KANSAS EMIGRANTS."] "Sing 'em," said his brother-in-law, jokingly. Bryant was a good singer, and he at once tuned up with a fine baritone voice, recalling a familiar tune that fitted the measure of the poem. "Oh, come now, Uncle Charlie," cried Sandy, from his blankets in the corner of the tent, "that's 'Old Dundee.' Can't you give us something lively? Something not quite so solemn?" "Not so solemn, my laddie? Don't you know that this is a solemn age we are in, and a very solemn business we are on? You'll think so before we get out of this Territory, or I am greatly mistaken." "Sandy'll think it's solemn, when he has to trot over a piece of newly broken prairie, carrying a pouchful of seed corn, dropping five grains in each sod," said his father, laughing, as he blew out the candle. "It's a good song; a bully good song," murmured the boy, turning over to sleep. "But it ought to be sung to something with more of a rig-a-jig-jig to it." So saying, he was off to the land of dreams. CHAPTER IV. AMONG THE DELAWARES. Quindaro was a straggling but pretty little town built among the groves of the west bank of the Missouri. Here the emigrants found a store or trading-post, well supplied with the goods they needed, staple articles of food and the heavier farming-tools being the first required. The boys looked curiously at the big breaking-plough that was to be of so much consequence to them in their new life and labors. The prairies around their Illinois home had been long broken up when they were old enough to take notice of such things; and as they were town boys, they had never had their attention called to the implements of a prairie farm.