The roads were new and rough; in many places in very bad condition. Sometimes there was a mere bridle path, and bushes and branches must be cut away, or fallen trees removed, to allow the wagons to pass. At noon of this first day they halted on the banks of a bright little stream, dined upon such fare as they had brought with them, and rested for an hour or two; allowing their horses to graze and the children to disport themselves in racing about through the underbrush in search of wild flowers, in which Miss Nell presently joined them. Kenneth, leaving the two women sitting together on a log, strolled away in another direction, toward Zeb and the drivers who were keeping guard over the horses and wagons. "Dear me!" sighed Mrs. Barbour, "what a journey we have before us! how we're ever to stand it I don't know; I am tired already." "Already!" echoed her sister; "why I don't intend to be really tired for a week." "I'd like to know what intentions have to do with it," returned the first speaker, rather angrily. "A good deal, I assure you," asserted Mrs. Nash, with decision. "Make up your mind to be miserable and you can't fail to be so; resolve to enjoy yourself, and you're almost equally sure to do that." "Humph!" grunted her companion, turning away with a scornful toss of the head. "What's wrong?" asked Miss Lamar, coming toward them with her hands full of delicate spring blossoms. "Wrong! where?" returned Mrs. Barbour, sharply, thinking the query aimed at her. "Yonder," Nell answered, gazing anxiously in the direction of the group about the wagons; "they all seem to be busying themselves about that wheel." "There, I knew it!" cried Mrs. Barbour, "something's broken, and we'll be kept here all night; and we'll be having such accidents all the way. Nobody ever was so unfortunate as I am." "Why you more than the rest of us?" asked her sister, dryly. "If one is delayed, we all are." "It was only a broken linchpin, already replaced by another," announced Kenneth a few moments later; "and now, if you please, ladies, we will go on our way again." At dusk the party arrived at a lonely log cabin in the woods, where they found shelter for the night. Fare and accommodations were none of the best--the one consisting of fat pork, hominy, and coarse corn bread, the other of hastily improvised beds, upon the floor of the lower room for the women and children; upon that of the loft overhead for the men. Mrs. Barbour, according to her wont, passed the time previous to retiring in fretting and complaining; talking of herself as the most ill-used and unfortunate of the human race, though no one else in the company was in any respect faring better than she, and all were not only bearing their discomforts with patience and resignation, but cheerfully and with an emotion of thankfulness that they had a roof over their heads; as a heavy rain storm had come on shortly after their arrival, and continued till near morning.