"You go upon this strange journey willingly, my son?"

"Yes, father."

"You will be both kind and thoughtful with Roger Matherson's little
girl?"

"She shall be to me as my own sister."

I felt the confiding clasp of his fingers, and realized how much to him
would be a successful termination of my journey.

"Kiss your mother, John," he said, a trustful look coming into his
kindly eyes. "We must all be astir early on the morrow."

Beneath the rived shingles of my little room, under the sloping roof,
how I turned and tossed through those long night hours! What visions,
both asleep and awake, came to me, thronging fast upon my heated brain,
each more marvellous than its fellow, and all alike pointing toward
that strange country which I was now destined by fate to travel! Vague
tales of wonder and mystery had come floating to me out of that unknown
West, and now I was to behold it all with my own eyes. But marvellous
as were my dreams, the reality was to be even more amazing than these
pictures of boyish imagination. Had I known the truth that night, I
doubt greatly whether I should have had the courage to face it.

At last the gray dawn came, stealing in at the only window, and found
me eager for the trial.