It is needless to enter into the details of that long and nerve-wracking journey. Not a moment of it was free from the dreadful fear of encountering enemies in the darkness, and, exhausted by excitement and grief, they dragged their way through the night, stopping every few yards to listen or peer into the gloom. Annie, utterly worn out, sometimes fell to the ground asleep, and then Al and Mrs. Briscoe had to take turns carrying her. Here and there at wide intervals around the vast circle of the horizon appeared a far distant, dull, yellow glow which they knew only too well must arise from other wrecked and burning homes like their own. Now and then the exhaustion of Mrs. Briscoe and Annie compelled them to sink down for a few moments' rest and it was almost daybreak when they finally reached a point which Al knew must be close to the cabin of the Olsens, about eight miles from Fort Ridgely, though they could see nothing of the house in the darkness. Evidently, therefore, it had not been burned, else they could have discerned the smouldering embers. Al saw the first faint streaks of dawn in the East and, realizing that they dared go no further by daylight, he led the way to a small clump of timber which he remembered, lying about a quarter of a mile east of the Olsens' buildings. He found a safe hiding-place for his mother and sister in a dense thicket of bushes under the trees, within a few feet of which he could himself lie and have a clear view of the Olsen house and its immediate vicinity. Here they remained until probably ten o'clock in the morning, Al all the time keeping a close watch on the house. Not a person nor an animal was about the place save a few chickens which he could see scratching in the yard, and he concluded that the Olsens must have been warned, perhaps by Mr. Briscoe himself on his homeward ride, and had escaped to the fort the day before. The Briscoes had not tasted food since the previous noon, and though neither his mother nor Annie would confess to being hungry, Al knew that they all needed nourishment in order to be able to continue their journey after nightfall. He determined to creep up to the deserted house in the hope of finding some food there, if nothing more than a few eggs in the log stable. Handing the revolver to his mother and dragging the musket along beside him, he made his way with painful slowness across the strip of open prairie between the woods and the house. On his way he saw nothing to alarm him, though he noted that just west of the house was a rise in the prairie, evidently concealing a depression beyond, into which he could not see. But no tree tops were visible over the rise, and he did not believe that any Indians would attempt to hide in an open valley. He made a hurried search through the house, which consisted of a single room, and was rewarded by finding a scant half-loaf of very stale bread. Nothing else could he find, for the