"Just listen to this!" cried the other, "just listen!" and, unfolding his newspaper, he read, with glowing cheeks and kindling eyes, an account of an attack made by some of the "pro-slavery men," as they were named, on a party of free-State immigrants who had attempted to cross the river near Kansas City. His voice trembled with excitement, and when he had finished reading, he asked his companion what he thought of that. Mr. Howell looked pensively down the street, now embowered with the foliage of early summer, noted the peaceful aspect of the village, and the tranquil picture which gardens, cottages, and sauntering groups of school-children presented, and then said slowly, "I never was much of a hand at shooting, Charles, leastways, shooting at folks; and I don't know that I could take steady aim at a man, even if I knew he was a Border Ruffian out gunning for me. But I'm with you, Charles. Charlie and Sandy can do a heap sight better in Kansas, after things get settled, than they can here. This place is too old; there's too much competition, and the boys will not have any show if they stay here. But what does Amanda say?" Now, Amanda was Mr. Bryant's wife, Mr. Aleck Howell's sister. When Aleck asked this question, the two men looked at each other for a moment, queerly and without speaking. "Well, she'll hate to part with Oscar; he's the apple of her eye, as it were. But I guess she will listen to reason. When I read this piece in the paper to her this morning, at the breakfast-table, she was as mad as a wet hen. As for Oscar, he's so fired up about it that he is down in the wood-shed chopping wood to blow off steam. Hear him?" And Mr. Bryant laughed quietly, notwithstanding his rising anger over the news of the day. At that moment Sandy came whooping around the corner, intent on overtaking a big yellow dog, his constant companion,--Bose by name,--who bounded along far in advance of the boy. "See here, Sandy," said his uncle, "how would you like to go to Kansas with your father, Oscar, Charlie, and myself?" "To Kansas? shooting buffaloes, deer, Indians, and all that? To Kansas? Oh, come, now, Uncle Charles, you don't mean it." "But I do mean it, my laddie," said the elder man, affectionately patting the freckled cheek of the lad. "I do mean it, and if you can persuade your father to go along and take you and Charlie with him, we'll make up a party--just we five--that will scare the Border Ruffians 'way into the middle of next year." Then, with a more serious air, he added, "This is a fight for freedom, my boy, and every man and every boy who believes in God and Liberty can find a chance to help. I'm sure _we_ can." This he said with a certain sparkle of his eye that may have meant mischief to any Border Ruffian that might have been there to see and hear.