Thirty years before men had fought their way over every inch of that trail, dying by scores along it from the arrow, the tomahawk, and the bullet. But that had been thirty years before. For twenty years the trail had been safe as far as the Ohio; for ten it had been measurably safe halfway up the state, to the edge of the Indian country. Throughout the journey Jack tried hard to be mournful. Every dawn as he opened his eyes on a world new created, vivid, baptized with the consecration of the dew, he reminded himself that life could hold no happiness for him--since Sally Habersham had given her hand to another. Every noontide as he saw the fields swelling with the growing grain, the apples shaping themselves out of the air, the vagrant butterflies seeking their painted mates above the deep, moist, clover-carpeted meadows, he told himself that for him alone all the vast processes of nature had ceased. Every evening, when the landscape smouldered in the setting sun, when the red lights burned across the tips of the waving grasses, when the burnished pines pointed aspiringly higher, when the rushing rapids on the chance streams glittered in sparkling points of multi-colored fire, he assured himself that to himself there remained only the hard, straight path of duty. Yet, in spite of himself, the edge of his grief grew slowly but surely dull. The bourgeoning forests, the swelling mountains, the vast stretches of solitude were all so many veils stretched between him and the past. His love for Sally Habersham did not lessen, perhaps, but it became unreal, like the memory of a dear, dead dream that held no bitterness. It was hard to brood on the life of gallant and lady, of silver and damask, of polished floors and stately minuets, when his every waking minute had to be spent in meeting the intensely practical problems that beset the pioneers. It was hard to assure himself that he would live and die virgin and that his house should die with him, when, as often as not, he dropped off to sleep in the same house, if not the same room, with a dozen or more sturdy boys and girls that were being raised by one of those same pioneers and his no less vigorous wife. Besides, Cato would not let him brood. Cato had feminine problems of his own which he insisted on submitting to his master’s judgment. When rebuffed, he preserved an injured silence till he judged that Jack’s mood had softened and then returned blandly to the charge. Very early on the trip Jack gave up in despair all attempts to check his menial’s tongue; he realized that nothing short of death would do this, and he could not afford to murder his only companion, though he often felt as if he would like to do it.