[Author's Note.--This is the story of my mother's life, every
incident of which she related to me herself. I have neither
exaggerated nor curtailed a single circumstance in relating this
story. I have supplied nothing through imagination, nor have I
heightened the coloring of her unusual experiences. Had I done so
I could not possibly feel as sure of her approval as I now do, for
she is as near to me to-day as she was before she left me to join
her husband, my beloved father, whose feet have long since wandered
to the "Happy Hunting Grounds" of my dear Red Ancestors.]


PART I.

It was a very lonely little girl that stood on the deck of a huge
sailing vessel while the shores of England slipped down into the
horizon and the great, grey Atlantic yawned desolately westward.
She was leaving so much behind her, taking so little with her, for
the child was grave and old even at the age of eight, and realized
that this day meant the updragging of all the tiny roots that clung
to the home soil of the older land. Her father was taking his wife
and family, his household goods, his fortune and his future to
America, which, in the days of 1829, was indeed a venturesome
step, for America was regarded as remote as the North Pole, and
good-byes were, alas! very real good-byes, when travellers set
sail for the New World in those times before steam and telegraph
brought the two continents hand almost touching hand.

So little Lydia Bestman stood drearily watching with sorrow-filled