"Yes," was the reply, "I am astonished at his patience; particularly with Nancy. She exasperates me beyond everything--she is such a martyr. Yes, always, in all places, and under all circumstances, she's a martyr." CHAPTER III. Within five or six miles of Chillicothe an approaching horseman was espied by our travellers, and, as he drew near, Mrs. Nash and her two boys recognized him with a simultaneous cry of delight. "Robert!" "Father, father!" To which he responded with a glad "Hurrah! so there you are at last!" as he put spurs to his horse and came dashing up to the side of the wagon containing his wife and children. There was a halt of several minutes while joyous greetings, and eager questions and answers were exchanged; then leaving Mr. Nash in charge of the slow-moving vehicles, Kenneth and Nellie rode on toward the town. It was the afternoon of a perfect day in May. Their path led them, now through the depths of a forest where grew in abundance the sugar maple, black walnut, buckeye, hackberry, cherry and other trees which give evidence of a rich soil; now across a beautiful prairie covered with grass from four to five feet high, and spangled with loveliest wild flowers, which with the blossoms of the plum tree, mulberry, crab apple and red and black haw, fringing the outer edge of the prairies, filled the air with delicious perfume, and feasted the eye with beauty. Nellie was in ecstasies. "It is a paradise, Dr. Clendenin! is it not?" she cried. "An earthly one," he answered with his grave kindly smile. "May you find much happiness in it, little lady." "And you too, doctor," she said gaily, turning her bright, winsome face to his. "I'm sure you ought." "You think it a duty to be happy? and you are right." "A duty? I never thought of it in that light," she said laughing lightly. "Ah! are we not bidden to be content with such things as we have, and to be always rejoicing?" They had become excellent friends--these two--as day after day they rode side by side a little in advance of the wagons. There was some ten years difference in their ages, a good deal seemingly at Nell's time of life. She looked up to Kenneth as to one much older and wiser than herself, and won by his ever ready sympathy and interest, talked to him with the charming frankness of her confiding nature and extreme youth. She told the history of her past years, particularly the last five, which had been spent in a boarding school in Philadelphia, and about the brother she was going to:--how he fought bravely for his country in the Continental army, had been taken prisoner by the British, what he had suffered on one of those dreadful prison-ships, till peace at last set him free, that he had married since and now had a family of children.