She shook her head in dissent. "You do not know how my heart fails me at times when I think of my dear boy far away in that Northwestern Territory fighting his battle with the world among strangers, often exposed to the pitiless storms, or in danger from wild beasts or savage Indians; coming home from his long rides over prairies and through forests, wet, cold, and weary, and finding no one to cheer him and comfort him." There were tears in her eyes and in her voice. "Don't be troubled about me," Kenneth said cheerily, "I am young and vigorous, and shall rather enjoy roughing it, in the pursuit of my calling?" "A noble calling to one who follows it in the right spirit, Kenneth. Your arrangements are all completed?" "Yes; we meet at the cross-roads an hour after sunrise." She gave him a troubled, anxious look, opened her lips as if to speak, then closed them again. "What is it, mother?" he asked. "Why should you hesitate to say to me all that is in your heart?" "Miss Lamar! I saw her the other day. She is sweet and fair to look upon, and very winsome in her ways, but--" The sentence was left unfinished, while her eyes sought his with a yearning, wistful look. "I will be on my guard," he said, huskily. "I know that marriage is not for me--as a physician I am convinced of it as another might not be--unless--oh, there will come to me, at times, a wild hope that there may one day be an end to this suspense--this torturing doubt and fear!" "Too many years have passed," she answered sadly. "I have no longer any expectation that it will ever be cleared up this side the grave." "Do not say it," he entreated, "it must be done! I shall never resign hope till--I have attained to some certainty; and yet, and yet--in either case it must be grief of heart to me." "My poor boy!" she murmured, regarding him with tenderly compassionate gaze; then after a pause, "Kenneth," she remarked, "there is little Clendenin about you except the name; you strongly resemble my mother's family in both disposition and personal appearance." "And yet," he said, with a melancholy smile, "there is nothing more certain than that I am a Clendenin." "Well," she said, gazing upon him with loving pride, yet with eyes dim with unshed tears, "it is a family of no mean extraction; and an honest, pious ancestry is something to be thankful for." CHAPTER II. Kenneth Clendenin, having completed his medical studies at Philadelphia, graduated with honor, and afterward spent a year in the hospitals there, was now about emigrating to Chillicothe, a town recently laid out by General Nathaniel Massie, in what was then the Northwestern Territory; now the state of Ohio. None of his family were to accompany him, but he was to act as escort to two ladies, who, with their children, were also going thither to join their husbands. One of them had under her care a young orphan girl, bound to the same place, where she was to make her home with a married brother, Major Lamar.