Joe reached to take it, but when Alfred opened his fist there was nothing at all there and the child howled with glee. Joe looked intently at his hand, and he pretended to slip the gift into his pocket. "Thanks," he said seriously, "that's just about the nicest present I ever had!" Alfred looked puzzled. Dainty little Emma and sober Joe came to him, and Joe gathered all of them into his lap. "Went fishing today," he said, "and the first thing you know there was an old man with long white whiskers standing right on the bottom of the creek...." He improvised as his story unfolded, telling how the old man's white whiskers hid an enormous mouth into which fish swam. Every now and again, probably because he was angry, he spit a fish at Joe or Tad. Baby Emma looked suspiciously at him and Tad turned with a knowing grin, but all remained interested. Finally the biggest fish of all came along and had trouble getting into the old man's mouth. There, and at once, he grew half again as big. When the old man tried to spit that fish he couldn't; he could get only half of it out of his mouth. Neither could he take it all the way in. The last Joe saw of him he was walking up the bottom of the creek with the fish still half in and half out of his mouth. Carlyle went to sleep in his arms and little Emma rested contentedly against his shoulder. Little Joe frowned while he considered this new problem, a fish stuck in an old man's mouth, and Alfred yawned. Emma came to clasp baby Emma gently to her and she put the child to bed. One by one, Barbara took the rest. Joe sat nervously in his chair, too tense to sleep and not knowing what to do. The night-to-be seemed an interminable time, and morning would never come. Joe thought of a hundred things he must do and he ached to be doing them so they could start for Oregon. "You better go to bed," Emma told him. "I couldn't sleep." "Neither can you stay awake until we start for Oregon." She came to his side and ran her hand through his hair, thinking, _He is part boy, part man. Like a boy, he can't wait to start. Like a man--like Joe_, she corrected herself, _he wants to make everything double-safe for his young ones. Only, can he make things safe? Is there any safety in the wilderness?_ Her hand stilled, then resolutely took up its stroking again. "Tomorrow's another day," she said. Joe grinned. "Could be you're right. I'll turn in." He was awake with earliest daylight, and lay staring at the thin dawn that lurked behind curtain-draped windows. It was a happy awakening, and the day held more true promise than any Joe could remember. He had, he felt as he lay beside Emma, been born all over again. But he had hurdled childhood and been born as a wholly new kind of man with nothing mean or petty in his life. Emma stirred beside him and Joe's hand stole out to clasp hers. For a moment they lay side by side, anticipating events-to-be by living their greatest adventure in their minds.