SUSTAINED HONOR.


CHAPTER I.

THE YOUNG EMIGRANT.

[Illustration]

The first recollections of Fernando Stevens, the hero of this romance,
were of "moving." He was sitting on his mother's knee. How long he had
been sitting there he did not know, nor did he know how he came there;
but he knew that it was his mother and that they were in a great covered
wagon, and that he had a sister and brother, older than himself, in the
wagon. The wagon was filled with household effects, which he seemed to
know belonged to that mother on whose knee he sat and that father who
was sitting on the box driving the horses which pulled the wagon.
Fernando Stevens was never exactly certain as to his age at the time of
this experience; but he could not have been past three, and perhaps not
more than two years old, when he thus found himself with his father's
family and all their effects in a wagon going somewhere.

He knew not from whence they came, nor did he know whither they were
going. It was pleasant to sit on his mother's knee and with his great
blue eyes watch those monster horses jogging along dragging after them
the great world, which in his limited comprehension was all the world he
knew,--the covered wagon. Suddenly some bright, revolving object
attracted his attention, and he fixed his eyes on it. It was the wagon