After an hour's rest we resumed our journey, and, although our conveyance was an open wagon, so crowded as to be very uncomfortable, especially for the children, yet we did the best we could, and the little emigrants bore the journey bravely for some hours longer. But when within six miles of our destination, just beside a deserted Indian encampment, our horses fairly gave out and would not pull another inch. So a large camp-fire was made; a sort of shelter constructed of branches of trees; a Buffalo robe laid on the ground, and the weary travelers found a temporary resting place, while our young friend, above alluded to, started with the used-up team to bring us help, if he could reach the prairie. I had chosen to pass the hours of waiting in the wagon, feeling that I could better protect my dear little baby in this way. So when all the tired ones were still, and the silence only broken by the crackling of the burning fagots, the occasional falling of a dry twig or branch from the bare, ghostly looking trees about us, the hooting of an owl, the dismal howlings of the wolves in the forest, I sat there looking at the weary forms so illy protected from the cold, thinking of the little white beds in which my dear ones were wont to slumber peacefully and comfortably, the friends whom we had left, who might even now be dreaming of us, of some of the farewell tea drinkings by cheerful firesides in dear old Ann Arbor, where tender words had been spoken, and our prospects in a far western home been discussed over delicate, tempting viands, prepared by loving hands; and these thoughts kept my _heart_ warmed and comforted, albeit I shivered with external cold; but hugging my baby closer, and committing all to the care of Him who never slumbers nor sleeps, I was just sinking into unconsciousness when a voice, not heard for a year and a half, broke the deep stillness with: "How! Nitchie!" and there by the flickering light of the fire, I saw our eldest son, who had left us, for a trip with his uncle to the Rocky Mountains a mere boy, and now stood before us in size a man. As his father rose to his feet, he exclaimed in an agony of joy: "Oh! father, is it you?" and he fell upon his father's neck and wept, and his father wept upon his neck. Then, as in a dream, I heard, "Where's mother?" in an instant he stood beside me, and I was sobbing in the arms of my first-born, my well-beloved son. Our messenger had told him that the horses had given out just beside an Indian encampment, and that, unless all haste was made, the load might be carried off. So the boy, without a moment's delay, took his horses and came at full speed to save the goods. Hence his first salutation, greeting, as he supposed, a party of Chippewas.