to see such few of her hardly-earned coins as remained unexpended
falling to the ground and rolling away in all directions as the doctor
turned pocket after pocket inside out in search of yet another and
another knife to surprise her withal.

At last the company got off, going by river to Council Bluffs, and
thence striking out upon the almost interminable trail, that, however
surely it might lead to fortune, was far from being a royal road
thereto. It was two months later when a member of the party, compelled
by ill-health to abandon the tedious journey and return home, brought
to Clarksville the first intelligence of the achievements of Doctor
Hanchett in the capacity of a physician and surgeon in actual
practice. These achievements cannot be recorded here, but a single
incident may be mentioned as indicating the estimation in which the
doctor's skill speedily came to be held by his companions. Before the
expedition had been three weeks upon the march his surviving comrades,
taking alarm at the rapidly augmenting number of lonely graves with
which they were dotting the dreary trail, hastily formed a conspiracy
to despoil him of his enginery of death. Under the silent stars,
what time the doctor was sleeping the deep sleep of the overworked
practitioner, his medicine-case and his miscellaneous assortment of
cutlery were quietly spirited away, and were never seen again. The
doctor proclaimed his loss upon waking in the morning, and felt it
keenly. He declared, however, that he deplored the casualty chiefly
in the interest of his companions, who were thus deprived, at one fell
blow, of his further services; and he cursed very heartily, in the
same interest, the "dastardly red-skins," whom he assumed to be guilty
of the theft.

Dora and her mother waited long and anxiously for a letter from the