There the boys sat, hugely enjoying the situation, while the others were loading the wagon and yoking the oxen on the other side. The lads could hear the cheery sounds of the men talking, although they could not see them through the trees that lined the farther bank of the river. The flow of the stream made a ceaseless lapping against the brink of the shore. A party of catbirds quarrelled sharply in the thicket hard by; quail whistled in the underbrush of the adjacent creek, and overhead a solitary eagle circled slowly around as if looking down to watch these rude invaders of the privacy of the dominion that had existed ever since the world began. Hugging his knees in measureless content, as they sat in the grass by the river, Sandy asked, almost in a whisper, "Have you ever been homesick since we left Dixon, Oscar?" "Just once, Sandy; and that was yesterday when I saw those nice-looking ladies at the fort out walking in the morning with their children. That was the first sight that looked like home since we crossed the Missouri." "Me, too," answered Sandy, soberly. "But this is just about as fine as anything can be. Only think of it, Oscar! There are buffalo and antelopes within ten or fifteen miles of here. I know, for Younkins told me so. And Indians,--not wild Indians, but tame ones that are at peace with the whites. It seems too good to have happened to us; doesn't it, Oscar?" Once more the wagon was blocked up for a difficult ford, the lighter and more perishable articles of its load being packed into a dugout, or canoe hollowed from a sycamore log, which was the property of Younkins, and used only at high stages of the water. The three men guided the wagon and oxen across while Charlie, stripped to his shirt, pushed the loaded dugout carefully over, and the two boys on the other bank, full of the importance of the event, received the solitary voyager, unloaded the canoe, and then transferred the little cargo to the wagon. The caravan took its way up the rolling ground of the prairie to the log-cabin. Willing hands unloaded and took into the house the tools, provisions, and clothes that constituted their all, and, before the sun went down, the settlers were at home. While in Manhattan, they had supplied themselves with potatoes; at Fort Riley they had bought fresh beef from the sutler. Sandy made a glorious fire in the long-disused fireplace. His father soon had a batch of biscuits baking in the covered kettle, or Dutch oven, that they had brought with them from home. Charlie's contribution to the repast was a pot of excellent coffee, the milk for which, an unaccustomed luxury, was supplied by the thoughtfulness of Mrs. Younkins. So, with thankful hearts, they gathered around their frugal board and took their first meal in their new home.